Regardless of your type of business, intellectual property can be one of your most valuable assets. Intellectual property is any unique creation and expression of the mind. Whether your business is technology-, consumer- or professional service-based, protecting your intellectual property, such as trade secrets, can be key factors to your success. For that reason, investing in the protection of your intellectual property is an important part of your business operation. Failure to police and defend your intellectual property rights could ultimately result in a loss of financial gain. Certain laws have been put into place to help protect your intellectual property, such as trade dress, copyrights, patents and trademarks.

Trade secrets include things such as formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or a compilation of information that is not generally known or easily attained. Using trade secrets, businesses obtain an economic advantage over competition. In order to have a trade secret, companies must take steps to protect the secrecy of their information. Exposing a trade secret means competitors can have access to that knowledge, which could impair that company’s market dominance or market position.

One of the easiest and most basic steps your company can take to protect your trade secrets is to require employees, contractors, and any companies that may be exposed to your trade secrets to execute confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements. Failure to enter into these types of agreements may result in the exposure of your trade secrets and, in effect, the waiver of trade secret protection. Read the rest of this entry »

The law states that you must attempt to protect intellectual property in order for the law to support your property rights. Yet theft occurs, and legal action to stop the use of intellectual property must be taken promptly to control the damage. This theft can occur from someone stealing files via hacking, copying data from the laptop of a traveling employee, or walking out the door with a USB drive loaded with the data. Trademarks are yours once they are registered, but must be monitored and managed to retain full control and its rights. How then do you protect intellectual property and trademarks?

1)      Verify the potential trademark is unique before using it. If you use something similar to someone else’s trademark, trademark laws give you no rights if someone else infringes upon your own trademarks, logos, or brand names.

2)      Trademark all logos and brand names as soon as they are decided upon. The faster the trademarks are received the sooner the law’s protections come into force.

3)      Stay silent on projects in work. Don’t discuss it in public or it may no longer be a trade secret or patentable. Read the rest of this entry »