Regardless of whether a business is just a brand-new startup or has been a multigenerational endeavor, understanding and safeguarding your intellectual property (IP) is a crucial step in allowing that business to grow, protect itself, and continue to cement its reputation. The point of IP is to safeguard all of the time, capital, and sweat invested into a business. Even a basic investment into IP can yield benefits like:
- Protecting your property from being stolen or damaged by another party.
- Converting your hard work and smarts into something profitable.
- Serve as a stepping stone to growing the business or expanding into other markets.
- Keeping competitors out of your lane.
- Protecting yourself from infringing upon the IP rights of another party.
- Blocking your employees from assisting competitors and business rivals.
- Drawing the interest of potential investors.
- Promoting your brand to investors, licensees, or other parties with a vested interest in buying from you.
By maintaining a portfolio of your various IP you can make your business considerably attractive to investors, if only because it is a reasonable conclusion that anyone who can successfully acquire and keep up with enough IP to require a portfolio knows at least a few proper things about running a business.
How IP Works and is Enforced
Small businesses tend to ignore being concerned about IP for a few reasons. Some just consider the whole verification and enforcement too much of a foreign territory to get involved in. Others may feel that the safeguarding of IP is just something for larger companies that can have a full suite of lawyers-these businesses tend to get taken advantage of by more cutthroat companies that see a good idea and learn that it is free for the taking. Lastly, you have the camp of businesses who are uninformed about just how many sorts of options and actions there are to be taken when it comes to IP.
One solid piece of advice for any new business is to never launch your company’s website until you have actively looked into and acted upon protecting your IP. If you do not bother to protect your businesses, you are opening yourself up to copycats or even a situation where some business takes the idea and gets it verified as their IP.
How Do I Learn About IP?
Several measures can be taken to increase your understanding of IP.
- Verify that your business name has not already been claimed by another entity.
- Conversing with an accountant or business mentor.
- Checking in on things with any industry groups that are connected to your business.
- Seek support for your IP with the local chamber of commerce.
- Look at how your competitors and business partners handle their IP and use those measures as a foundation of your approach.
- Check which department governs IP in your country of operation.
- In cases where your business has a board or equivalent governing body, engage with the members that have a great deal of knowledge and experience with IP.
- In cases where the business is a startup, research startup incubators and look into working with one of them.
Any person reading this blog post has a vested interest in their business, idea, product, or service, so they must have a firm grasp on how to use IP to promote that business and protect its future.
Common Mistakes Made By Businesses When Dealing with IP
A lot of small businesses regard IP as a simply theoretical element of running a business; it is either not something to think about at all or gets addressed after most other matters of running the business have been satisfied. A fair number of them either fail to grasp the true value of their IP or always tend to place it near the bottom of a lengthy list of “more important” topics. To reiterate a prior point, there is no inconvenient time for analyzing IP because it can greatly imperil the future of a business if left ignored or as a hobby.
The Common Pitfalls of IP
- Telling other parties about this amazing idea you have without first securing it from theft. This is just giving those people free rein to do whatever they wish with your idea because, until it is secured as IP, it is not really your idea.
- Thinking the work of protecting your business name is done just because you got it registered. You need to be vigilant when it comes to safeguarding your IP and this includes being on the lookout for any other parties who encroach upon that IP. Yes, registration sets the precedent for who owns the IP but you must still be on the watch for anyone who hopes that they can skirt by with IP theft.
- Being “proactive” by trying to sell your invention before checking what sort of IP protection options exist for it. For all you know, you may be trying to sell something with traits already associated with someone else’s IP and there may come a reckoning if that other party discovers the theft.
- Getting iconography, branding, or even a website made without verifying if any of that infringes upon another entity’s trademark or copyright. This has the same issues as the prior point; acting without research can lead to a minefield of unforeseen legal expenses and even loss of any future revenue.
- Expanding your branding into new markets before even considering IP protection.
- Acting under the belief that registering your IP with the relevant organizations and entities within your home country also means that the IP is safeguarded on an international level. Every country and territory is different and it is up to you or a skilled IP firm to verify if and how you can respond to IP theft originating within another country.
- Failing to mark your packaging, web pages, and other marketing outlets with a copyright symbol.
- Using any sort of multimedia, be it images, sounds, or other content, that was not made by you and failing to verify if you had permission to use that multimedia from its creator. This is just dishonest-you are stealing someone’s content until they affirm their consent for you to make use of it; even Creative Commons requires acknowledgment of the creator.
- Acting as if you are due a domain name just because it matches the name of your business. This is pure arrogance and some companies will buy multiple related domain names just to be sure that no one else can use them.
- Failing to protect confidential information. A good business will be sure to point out and document every interaction with an employee or contractor involved with your IP, especially when that business is just getting started.
- Assuming that all IP protection is a costly endeavor. Filing a copyright can cost a business as little as $45. Filing a trademark can cost between $225 and $400 and filing a patent can run anywhere from $75 to $300. While an established copyright requires no maintenance cost to preserve, trademarks and patents incur maintenance costs; it costs $425/class for a trademark and $400, $800, or $1,600 for a patent, depending upon the size of the specific entity seeking to file a patent.
