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Written by : Karina Balladares |
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you've got an intellectual property strategy that's terrific and you've been following it diligently even better and the result of course is that you've identified a number of different technological points that might be worth protecting might be worth getting intellectual property protection for so now what well now we have to make some decisions now we have to decide what to protect and how to protect it first of all the most expensive and powerful protection would be a patent if you decide you don't want to pursue a patent either it's too expensive at this point or it's not the right kind of technology for patent protection you might decide to keep it as a trade secret if you do that you still have to protect it you still have to remember that there are steps to take basically keeping a trade secret secret well certainly copyright protection is terribly important in a lot of industries software industries certainly it's one of the central i p protections and if you're in an industry that looks to copyright protection you'll want to pay attention to that of course you're probably going to want to pick a trademark that somehow conveys to the marketplace what your product is all about what your service is all about so with all of these wonderful opportunities all the different forms of intellectual property that are available to you to protect the technology that your team is developing pick and choose carefully which you're going to use integrate them together into an ip portfolio an arsenal of ip assets that you can use for competitive advantage in the marketplace really you want to think about the fact that all of your intellectual property probably could be put on a thumb drive and walk out the door at the end of the night you have to take active steps to protect it and that means the mechanical things like locking doors and and certainly not having important documents out on your desktop when visitors come through no one should be allowed into your facilities without an obligation of confidentiality and frankly no one should be allowed into your facilities that really don't have to be there beyond the obvious mechanical facets there's your i t side it goes without saying you've got to have terribly robust firewalls to prevent hacking in and out logs for your computers talk to your it department enter your patent lawyer and decide just how much access do you need to have you need access for your team to work together effectively but too much access can cost you a trade secret another point on protecting your technology when an employee leaves have that exit interview remind them about their obligation of confidentiality with respect to the trade secrets that they learned while at the company even if they invented the trade secret they still owe an obligation to the company to leave it behind and not to bring it forward to a new employer now the truth is you're going to have to disclose your technology pretty routinely as you go through day-to-day business activities you're going to have to disclose some of your technology probably to suppliers and you're going to have to disclose some of your technology to your customers or your potential customers i think what you want to do is have a confidentiality agreement with the supplier this is often referred to as an nda a non-disclosure agreement what it says is that you're going to disclose the technology you're going to disclose something to the supplier they agree to keep it confidential typically for a term of years maybe five years maybe 10 depends on your particular circumstances now the important thing here is that it's protecting patentability if you ever decided you did want to seek patent protection that confidentiality obligation on the part of the supplier means that your invention was not available to the public you've preserved that absolute novelty that we talked about what about your customers you can go to customers and ask them to sign a confidentiality agreement they probably won't depending on how big they are and how important your technology might be to them maybe they will if they will good do that because the truth is that an awful lot of potential customers take your idea and run to their established suppliers and see if they can get it cheaper hard fact of life so confidentiality agreements with even your customers when you can get them probably the more common practice is to limit to the bare minimum what it is you have to tell your customer tell them what the performance is don't tell them how you do it how about ideas that are coming into you from outside can be valuable can be dangerous beware perhaps they have intellectual property that applies to the idea perhaps they would simply make the assertion that it was disclosed to you in confidence and you should have known that so what do you do well anyone that brings you an idea you don't want to be contaminated you tell them that you're happy to listen to the idea but first before they say it they need to sign a confidential disclosure waiver agreement and what it typically says is we'll accept your idea we'll take a look at it but we will not provide any confidentiality if you have a patent of course we'll honor it other than that we're free to use the idea you're about to disclose to us you know you've got competition out there they're working hard too they're collecting ip assets as well and they're going to use those to defend their market space and to try and take your market space so you need to avoid infringing the intellectual property assets of other people you need to avoid infringing their patents and their copyrights and their trademarks and their trade secrets so how do we go about doing this i mean you've got plenty on your plate already and now you have to worry about the other guy being on the wrong side of an ip infringement suit is a bad place to be you know there's an old joke in patent law that if you find yourself in a patent lawsuit try to be on the side with the patents but sometime it might happen that you're on the wrong side so let's try to minimize that risk how do we do that at the very front end of a project you can have your patent lawyer do a patent clearance search sort of a state-of-the-art search find out what's out there it's not that you're looking to duplicate their work it's that you're looking not to find out what patents are out there that might get in your way and avoid them you know there's a little bit of a chicken and egg problem here you want to ask your patent lawyer what can i do safely and your patent lawyer wants to say well what is it you want to do well what i want to do is whatever i can do safely certainly before you get to the end of your development project and preferably well before have it cleared have a clearance study done to make sure that you're not going to invest in marketing and capitalizing and all of these sweat and blood and tears that go into launching a product or service only to find out you've got a problem that's late do it earlier if you have to redesign your redesign if you have to get a license you get a license you might hear the e
Thanks for your comment Jame Caldoron, have a nice day.
- Karina Balladares, Staff Member
welcome to the journey today we'll be talking about tips for protecting your business's intellectual property all businesses have intellectual property or ip whether they know it or not exactly you could have created something you have your brand or a website but whatever you do have you want to make sure that you protect it because it's yours so definitely make sure you take the necessary steps all right so let's start talking about those intangible assets now these are your ideas know-how your processes they're the foundation of your business and what sets you apart from your competitors so here are some examples of different types of ips that every business has but rarely considers starting with trademarks so if you have a specific business name special name for your products or logo those are all intangible assets that can be trademarked and these trademarks are things that are specific to your business special words or images that you want to make sure that you protect and that are different from everyone else and what i like about trademarks is they represent your brand they represent your reputation you know what it is what it's going to be just make sure that it's unique to you and your customers your target audience kind of like the coffee and kit flips exactly like the coffee and kick flips and that's why it's important that you're not infringing on anyone else's ip so you want to make sure that this is unique to you again with coffee and kickflips when we were thinking of the name it was difficult at first because just the shared amount of names that are out there there's a lot of coffee out there a lot of coffee a lot of skate brands so to come up with something unique yeah it took some time took some research but we're saying that's critical for you to do make sure that you aren't doing something too similar to another business or logo or brand that's already out there and that's why it's so important to really protect your intellectual property because it's not always intentional but sometimes some other people could actually do what you've already done and you don't want that to happen because that's your baby so protect your intellectual property all right so for our next one copyright any original piece of work that has been produced in a tangible medium is considered a copyright think of music movies and it doesn't stop there you could have original website copy marketing materials and other creative works the big point here is it has to be an original work that either you've done or you've paid someone else to do you can't take someone else's work and present it as your own now this might seem oh pretty straightforward right no it's a large world on the internet it's easy to get mixed up on where was this original photo from we see it all the time on social media and businesses ask me all the time oh emma so a customer was in my restaurant they took a picture while they were there can i use that for a restaurant's instagram i always say ask always ask the original photographer of that photo before then sharing it over to your instagram for your restaurant all right so next on our list are patents now patents have been a little hard to understand because most times patents have been synonymous with an idea and i remember when i had a former job in research there was a gentleman who worked for a company and he came up with an awesome idea however the patent on that idea belonged to the company and not him so it's very important to know all the limitations of patents so in reality a patent allows you to exclude anyone else from creating or selling your invention all right so just because you've gotten your patent doesn't mean that you just kick your feet up and begin to just have money rolling in you actually have to do the work to get your product created so if you think i have this great idea then go ahead get a patent attorney so that way you do it right work with an expert and it's better than trying to just do it on your own i'll go to wikipedia and figure it out that may not work so next up i want to talk about trade secrets one of my favorite things to talk about and it's because this is when you have something about your business or your company that is only known to you the business and it reminds me of it reminds me of when i worked at dagwood's deli in bloomington indiana don't worry john i'm not going to give away your secret but when after we were hired we actually had to sign a statement that said we would not tell the secret sauce recipe there was just yeah i can't tell you but there was this great sauce that we put on all of our sandwiches that everyone was just jonesing for and i can't even remember the recipe but at the time it was a big deal i had to keep it a secret for the owner all right so trade secrets are processes formulas or methods that you use to create your product so like in emma's case you want to make sure that you have these agreements in place with those who know your information to keep it confidential under threat of legal action all right let's jump into some tips i recommend plan ahead because you might not be able to do everything at once or protect everything at once and things pop up maybe you need more money than you thought so get a calendar out plan ahead get time on your side and next you want to have an employee agreement it's an important piece to the ip puzzle now this is different than a non-disclosure and that's right nondisclosure is going to protect your ip from any public disclosure so for example let's say some people were coming through dagwood's deli while we're making the secret sauce they can't then leave the business that day and go replicate it or share that recipe so the employee agreement keeps your employees from leaking your ip and then non-disclosure protects you from having people outside your business leaking your ip also want to talk about agreements with consultants or vendors keep in mind you're paying them for a service but you still have an ip this is your property it's your idea they can't go and take it all right so next you want to make sure that you file the patent application because no one wants to disclose that they have this great idea that intellectual property before you know it's yours and you own it so if your product or service has a specific name make sure you protect that so for example remember snuggies the snuggie it's so long yeah you have one of course you're like i have two so that if you have something unique like that the snuggie you can protect it you'll notice as seen on or tm afterwards all right so now let's talk about the internet if you find something online it doesn't necessarily mean that it's okay to use if you're gonna use some kind of creative piece of work and commercial purposes make sure that you reach out to the one that owns the copyright and make sure you have their express consent to use it for instance at my job at godaddy most times content creators if they're using some kind of stock photo they want to make sure that it's either not copyright protected so they're going to use it with no problem or if it
Thanks Kronh your participation is very much appreciated
- Karina Balladares
About the author
I've studied history of computer hardware at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville and I am an expert in statistics. I usually feel amused. My previous job was music teacher I held this position for 2 years, I love talking about anime and crocheting. Huge fan of Christina Ricci I practice canoe sprint and collect plants.
Try Not to laugh !
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