According to a report by the Associated Press, intellectual property theft costs the US economy more than $600 billion annually. This figure includes different types of infringement, such as counterfeiting, piracy, and trade secret theft.

Due to technological advancement, intellectual property theft cases are increasing, pushing entrepreneurs to invest largely in the legal aspect of protecting the IP. For a company, creativity is an important ingredient that helps in setting up a strong foundation in the market.

When you research and develop your products, you produce essential assets known as intellectual property (IP), the worth of which is recognized by investors, clients, and competitors.

Effective intellectual property protection will enable you to form strategic alliances and attract investment. You should consider the best technique for protecting your intellectual property from the beginning of your firm.

What is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual property (IP) involves different aspects including human inventions and creative works, designs, and commercially utilized symbols, pictures, and others that represent a company or human.

There are three areas of Intellectual Property- patents, copyrights, and trademarks that allow people to receive recognition or financial profit from what they innovate or create. When you are building a company, irrespective of the type, it is essential to protect every aspect of the company.

But how do you protect your intellectual property legally?

In this blog post, you will find insights into the process of helping you to hold the right of creativity with yourself and types to protect Intellectual property.

4 Types to Protect Intellectual Property

●       Copyrights

Copyright protects written creations during the creator’s lifetime, plus 70 years. These creative works are concrete representations of the creator’s original ideas, which cannot be protected. Copyrights can protect a variety of works, including manuscripts, books, song lyrics, artworks, pictures, and sound recordings.

Copyright exists when the author writes the original work, but registration grants copyright owners exclusive and increased rights.

●       Trademarks

Trademarks protect words, symbols, and emblems that identify a company’s goods or services. Trademark registration is perpetual as long as it is used in business and renewed every ten years. This makes trademarks one of the most important intellectual property safeguards for firms.

Intellectual property ensures that a business is consistently recognizable to customers.

This means that if your logo is identical to one of your competitors, you will be unable to trademark it because it may cause customer confusion.

●       Patents

Patents last 20 years and protect several types of ideas. The fundamental to a patent’s protection is that the innovation must be fresh or innovative, which means that you cannot patent an existing product.

●       Trade Secrets

Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that your organization may choose to keep confidential and not disclose to others. It may be to preserve an economic advantage that would be lost if your trade secret became public or was stolen by a competitor.

5 Steps to Legally Protect Your Creations

Protecting your intellectual property allows you to get an economic advantage for your firm while also ensuring that you can hold the right for your creative ideas, products, and services. The best strategy to preserve intellectual property (IP) is to register it with the government through a legal process.

1- File your Discoveries

In the information age, leaks are common. While you can only sometimes avoid them, you may document your discoveries and breakthroughs as they happen.

Suppose another company acquires unlawful information through a leak and attempts to reuse or reproduce your ideas. In that case, your records can provide a timeline for your operations and demonstrate your validity (and ownership rights) over your intellectual property.

2- Keep Business Ideas Secret

As an entrepreneur, it is vital to take steps to keep business ideas as secret, before implementing them. Be cautious about who you trust with this sensitive information, and avoid promoting your concept in any public venue. If you’re working with partners, you should consult an attorney and establish appropriate non-disclosure agreements.

3- Using Digital Rights Management Systems

If all your work goes online, using a digital rights management system is the best way to protect your work against digital theft. For instance, many websites have different content and use an ethical SEO service that doesn’t allow third parties to copy-paste the content work.

This helps to keep the content unique. Besides, you can restrict the use of your creative ideas through watermarks and restrict several devices to use in your work. DMS is the best encryption tool to invest in to protect your intellectual property.

4- Sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement

When you venture into any business or service with the opposite party, it is essential to exchange well-documented and signed NDA. This aspect should be followed within your organization, especially if running a partnership company. You can even follow this step when forming a business.

For instance, if you are starting a business in Florida, it is best to connect with legal or business experts who will help you understand all the instructions for how to start an LLC in Florida. Draft an NDA to improve your take against IPR infractions such as trade secret misappropriation, in which an employee may reveal sensitive IP-related information to third parties.

If you want to draft an NDA with all the legal aspects included, you can connect with a professional content writing service having legal writers. These legal content writers have insightful knowledge of drafting an NDA.

5- Register the IP for Further Development

You must register your intellectual property rights in a way that can be further developed or modified in future. If you discover something new while working as an employee, the contract almost certainly includes a clause about it.

In most circumstances, the employer will have the complete right of invention. Still, there may be procedures in place that allow the employee to regain rights if the invention is not used within a certain time–in some countries, this is codified in law.

Conclusion

You probably own a lot more intellectual properties belonging to your company. Securing your intellectual property rights does necessitate hiring a good attorney to assist you in discovering, documenting, and registering it by keeping all the legal prospects in mind. The intricacies of intellectual property rights necessitate specialized knowledge and a thorough comprehension of legal methods. As artists, corporations, and individuals, you must manage and safeguard your intellectual property.