If you’re an author, inventor, designer, or creative artist, then you know very well how important it is to ensure your intellectual property is safe. While it might not be apparent, cases of intellectual property falling into the wrong hands are not unheard of. These end up costing corporate and individuals losses amounting to millions, potentially billions of dollars each year.
However, it is not unusual to find yourself sharing your IP with people you work with as you seek to develop your concept, improve your product, or get it to the market. If you’re not careful, your IP secrets could leak and this could jeopardize the entire thing. You might even lose your rights to someone who barely spent a drop of sweat. This makes it important to be well informed before sharing your IP with your employees, business partners, or even family members. This having been mentioned, here are a few things you need to know before you share your intellectual property.
1. Patent Registration and Licensing
If your intellectual property is an invention, one of the very first things to do is to register a patent for your IP. In line with the folks at Revision Legal, patent registration protects your IP in various ways. For starters, it ensures that no one can create, produce, or reproduce your work for the period within which it is protected by the patent. It gives you exclusive rights to your invention and you can block anyone else from making, using, selling, or importing it.
With the help of a good patent attorney, you can be informed and legally guided to navigate the complex matters revolving around patents and patent infringement. Any third-party who needs to use your IP should seek approval from you. They will require a patent license, which will authorize them to make, use, or distribute your innovation. When it comes to patent licensing, you will also need to work with an experienced patent attorney. They will help draft the patent agreement, which also highlights the responsibilities, rights, and limitations of the third party to whom the license is issued.
2. Understand Copyrights
When it comes to intellectual property protection, copyrights are mainly used in creative work such as artistry. As you can tell from the name, holding copyright means that you hold the legal right to the word, copy, and reproduce the piece of work. Once you register your copyright, you also reserve the right to grant or deny permission to another party to copy your work. When sharing your IP, holding copyright can help you seek funding or even collect royalties from third-parties who use your copyrighted work.
3. Register Your Trademark
Thinking hard to come up with a name and the catchiest logo and strapline is your effort. There is more to branding than just having all your work merchandise branded with your logo. Trademarks protect your images and domain, mention it, but how do you claim it if someone decides to sabotage it? Without legal registration, you have nothing to argue when someone else has taken it. A trademark lawyer can help you get through the paperwork process to ensure you do not miss a single step in your registration process.
4. Register the Business
Branding is not only about the trademarks and logos; it goes deeper into domain names and products. For instance, if you have a business under your name (e.g., Lyric Johnson Advocates), it is not always safe when it comes to intellectual property protection. You may need to register the business under a different name and separate entity from you as a person. Registering the business name protects your identity as well as your interests as an entrepreneur.
5. Confidential Contracts and Licensing Partners
In business, as long as you are not in a sole proprietorship, you can never be sure about the confidentiality of the work secrets. Cases like these need confidentiality, and this is where confidentiality agreements come in. Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) are crucial in protecting your trade secrets and intellectual property, so have your employees and business partners sign them when getting into a contract. This ensures that in case there’s a breach of the agreement, legal action can be taken against them to safeguard your interests as an entrepreneur and intellectual property owner. As explained above, anyone who wants to use your brand, merchandise, copyrighted, or patented work will need to acquire a license from you.
6. Execute Security Measures
Technology and the internet may fuel the dynamics, expansion, and triumph of a business. Still, there are some drawbacks, especially if your company is well connected and most of its information is stored online. There’s always a risk of a data breach. The thirst and hunger in hackers do not allow them to sleep hungry, they try left, right, and center to take you back the genesis. Setting up security measures can help you to identify malicious activities quickly and have them rectified. Some security measures you can use to safeguard your IP information may include:
- Setting up passwords
- Encrypting data and all IP that is transmitted digitally
- Restricting IP access to essential partners
- Limiting unauthorized copies of drives and devices
- Using VPN access
- Regardless of your business’s size, nobody wants to disclose his business information to anyone. For this reason, you will also want to invest in reliable software for storing your files and managing your database.
7. Avoid Partnerships
Despite all the glam of financial cash flow and high-end business services that come with partnerships, one thing is for sure. Dealing with trade secrets can be a concern. Since the number is beyond one, maintaining full control over the business ideas can be tricky. A group of people may develop an IP, but one of them should retain ownership despite the collaboration. The other parties may copy, distribute, recreate, or wield whatever without consulting the other owners. In a partnership, the joint owners must be present in a patent or copyright legal proceeding—failure to which the proceedings will not be held. The risks of joint ownership are relatively high, so think twice before getting into a partnership when you have intellectual property.
Finally, it is always important to vet your employees and business partners thoroughly before sharing your IP information with them. While all the legal paperwork might be signed and sealed, some people just have ill intentions and will stop at nothing but make your life miserable. With the above info in mind, you should be safer as you decide whether or not to share your IP!