Ideas & IPR
Most good ideas are lost
before anyone tries to steal them
Lost to not knowing protection exists, not knowing which kind applies, or finding out after the idea has already been published, pitched or demonstrated at a college fair.
This is the teaching part of the site. I write it for the person in the fourth row of a seminar hall who has an idea and no vocabulary for it yet — a student, a first-time founder, a faculty member who has just been asked to run a cell, a manufacturer who has made something distinctive for fifteen years and never registered any of it.
It is general information. It is not advice about your matter, and reading it does not create a professional relationship.
Start here
Four things, four different jobs
The most common and most expensive confusion in the room is treating these as interchangeable. They protect different things, for different lengths of time, and the wrong one gives you nothing.
Protect how something works
An invention — a process, a machine, a composition — that is new, involves an inventive step and can be made or used. Disclosure before filing is where most first-timers lose it.
Protect what you are called
A name, mark or logo that tells customers this came from you. The asset most small businesses already own in practice and have never registered.
Protect how something looks
Shape, configuration, pattern, ornament — the appearance of an article, not its function. Often the right answer when a patent is not.
Protects the expression
Writing, code, music, film, drawings. It protects a particular expression of an idea, never the idea itself — the distinction that surprises people most.
These summaries are deliberately short and general. Each becomes a full explainer, reviewed by a qualified professional and carrying that reviewer’s name, before it is treated as a reference.
In the pipeline
Explainers being written
-
Essay · Draft
From a village register to a patent register
The origin essay: what a small village taught Dhruv about ownership, and what that has to do with intellectual property.
-
IPR explainer · Factcheck
What intellectual property actually protects
Patents, trademarks, designs, copyright — in plain language, with the mistakes first-time filers make most often.
-
Essay · Draft
The first filing that changed how I saw the work
One idea, one student, one application — and the moment the abstraction became a person.
-
Opinion · Legal
Why a college needs an IPR cell before it needs a patent
An argument about sequence: culture and capability first, filings second.
Where the work happens
I teach here. My team files there.
Filing, prosecution, valuation, licensing and enforcement are professional services. They are handled by MYCrave Consultancy and Services — a team, with a process, and people qualified to do the work.
MYCrave reports more than 22,000 IP applications (evidence: Reported by the organisation) and 11,000 clients (evidence: Reported by the organisation). Those are the company’s numbers, covering everything the team has done. I mention them because they are the experience behind this writing — not because I filed them myself.
Legal information disclaimer
Everything in this section is general information about intellectual property law and practice, written for a lay audience. It is not legal advice, it is not an opinion on any specific set of facts, and it does not create an advocate—client or agent—client relationship. Law and procedure change; articles carry a published date and an updated date, and an out-of-date article is still out of date even when it is still online.
For a specific matter, consult a registered patent agent or an advocate qualified in the relevant jurisdiction. If you find an error here, tell us and it will be corrected.