What are the potential risks that companies face when using crowdsourcing to manage their IP such as patent search?
Crowd Sourcing requires that whatever is being crowdsourced be described to excite your potential investors or to get their assistance.
If you are crowdsourcing to find prior art to invalidate a patent that you are currently infringing, you have in effect let a large pool of people know or suspect that you are infringing that patent. This could get back to the patent owner who will then carefully review your activities and potentially sue you when otherwise you would have gone unnoticed beneath their radar.
In the realms of getting funds from crowdsourcing to search your invention, your crowdsourcing disclosure could be enough to invalidate your patent. The reason is that by disclosing your invention before filing a patent application, you could be unintentionally invalidating the patent in many territories.
