business-plan, intellectual-property, investmentI just finished watching Mark Cuban 4 Parts of an Ideal Investment Pitch.
Mark [Cuban] is looking for four things: The company’s core competency, why you’re great, how the idea is protectable and how it can scale.
What does it mean for an idea to be protectable?
That differs slightly between countries etc. but in most countries (i.e. for copyright there are very limited difference legally speaking between signatories on the Berne Convention). An idea itself can't be protected (especially if you go to an alternate universe with mind readers ;) ) - what can be protected is 'how to do something' (patent) (and closest to raw idea)., 'created content' (copyright) or an identifying thing for your business (trademark). Generally speaking with a bit more details these are the types of intellectual property protection:
Copyright: Automatic for any creative content (ie a painting, this post, a movie etc. etc.). Some countries also have registration available which helps to prove that it really is yours but that is not required (though in some it can give you additional rights).
Trademark: Like the Apple logo or something that is identifiebly that company. You can register them - steps differ a bit between regions. Registering will definitely improve your brand recognition by actually registering the mark(s). Unregistered marks have very minimal protection but do have some protection in most jurisdictions.
Patent: He last of the big 3 IP protection methods and the most relevant to your question. A Patent protects an invention that is novel (new), non-obvious (not immediately apparent to average people doing the same thing). Patent is also the only one that you absolutely have to do something to get. It is also more complicated since too broad of disclosure early on could prevent you from getting a patent later.
More details are I would say beyond the scope for a generic question but go ahead and ask a new finer scoped question for more information.
I think Mr Cuban is referring to how your idea can be protected against competitive threats, in a broad sense.
If you’ve invented something, then you might be able to secure some strong legal protections (against others copying your invention) in the form of a registered patent. No doubt this was the main form of protection that he had in mind. As @NickWilde has pointed out, the law can also recognise and protect other types of intellectual property.
But you need not have any intellectual property rights to be able to defend against competition. I don’t condone every one of the following ideas (indeed some may violate competition law in your jurisdiction), but you may nevertheless gain some protection against competitive threats from:
substantial barriers (e.g. capital investment) against new market entrants;
long-established relationships with prospective customers that you can leverage;
rewarding customer loyalty and/or increasing their switching costs;
securing exclusivity with, or offering incentives to, channel partners;
distracting from competitors’ marketing efforts;
locking-up key marketing vehicles; and
aggressively threatening/acquiring/targeting competitors before they launch.
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