How do you go from a patent to a company? Pam Ancona, who is both a patent attorney and a chemistry PhD, has noticed that prospective entrepreneurs “underestimate all that it takes in order to take that idea and turn it into an actual product. Just because you have a patent,” for example, doesn’t mean that you might not need more. “You may need more than one.” Not every idea works out, or works out in the way you expect. “It takes a lot of years to get a patent, and it also takes a lot of years to get a product. What may be commercially viable when you file the patent application may not be commercially viable by the time it gets granted. Then it may be even more years before, or the viability may change yet again after you get the patent granted.” Ideally, you have developed a stockpile of ideas “that you can pull from, that have been protected.”
