The road to your medtech innovation is long and winding. To reach your goal you need to talk to as many people as possible! It is the only way to find your target group and its specific needs. Beware of potential patent pitfalls though.
Develop your ideas… and patent them!
It is vital for the entrepreneur-to-be to spot potential partners and customers. That is why Daniel Bartel and Nils Hoegsdal keep bugging the participants to talk to as many people as possible. Only by interviewing them is it possible to find out which product they really need and which features it should provide.
In this process, the teams need to strike a delicate balance between being honest and open for input on the one hand. On the other they may not be too outspoken about their ideas. Fail to do so and you may be stuck in patent no-man’s-land. European patent and trade mark attorney Matthias Hofmann from Boehmert & Boehmert enlightened the participants about the necessity of a patent application and the risks of an (accidental) infringement. His tip for now:
So the best approach, for now: tell people the problem you want to solve, but don’t blab about concrete solutions before you have handed in your patent application.