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Patent Utilization Case GROWTAC, inc.

Mr. Masayuki Kimura
President, GROWTAC, inc.
Interviewed on August 9, 2016
Interviewed and manufactured by Pixidea, Inc.

We are a small manufacturer of sports cycling-related products.

We develop, manufacture and sell training machines of sports cycling.

One of our key products is called "roller."

It is a training machine that can be used indoors.

Cyclists use it for training purpose.

Once we register our patent, our product cannot be imitated or copied.

I think it is the most important thing about patent registration.

For small-capitalization companies that newly entered the market like us, it is important to register the patent without fail.

Because large-capitalization companies having secured sales channels are in the same market.

It is easy for them to imitate the best-selling product and manufacture the similar product.

Because marketing for the product is already finished, and development costs are not required.

But if they do this way, it is the small-capitalization companies that go bankrupt.

We have to prevent this no matter what.

Our rights and products should be protected, irrespective of the size of capitalization.

Protecting our rights means protecting our products.

It is essential for survival.

Although there are an infinite number of products, only a few products can be differentiated.

If you have an idea that can be differentiated, you have to protect it securely.

Otherwise your idea will be imitated.

We obtained our first patent as a prior investment.

Because we did not know whether our idea would be imitated or not.

As it turned out, there were some companies that copied our product.

But they cannot manufacture the same product because we had our patent registered.

They make slightly different products.

But we can manufacture the best product because we manufacture our product from the first, and our inventor knows our product and technology the best.

When we manufacture the best product, our customers support our product.

Even if the imitation is cheaper, they purchase our product.

We need to work hard even after the patent registration.

We feed it back to our product to improve our product.

Thus, we can turn our prior investment costs into profits.

Patent registration and the feedback to our clients need to be done at the same time.

Otherwise the patent registration would be meaningless.

How the patent was registered.

When we registered our second product as a patent, we looked for the patent attorney who had experiences of handling patents on bicycles.

Then we met Mr. Watabe in Shousei International Patent Office.

Thanks to Mr. Watabe, our patent was registered with wider scope of claims.

From my experiences of writing some patent specifications, I did not expect that the patent would be registered without amendments because the scope of claims of our second patent was quite wide.

But the patent was registered by the JPO without amendments.

I think it is because of the efforts of Mr. Watabe.

I greatly appreciate his support.

▼When you click on the image below, the video of English version is played.▼