Intellectual property, or IP, is the foundation of thousands of businesses globally. Safeguarding your inventions and creative works is essential for the success of your company. Not only will you maximise the value of your business, but you will also minimise the risk of unauthorised use.
Here are some steps you should take to protect such a valuable asset.
The importance of securing your innovations
As a founder of your business, the role of protecting your IP falls to you. Securing patents, copyrights and trademarks will help to safeguard your inventions. This, in turn, will help to create a strong brand identity, which will boost your profile and business revenue.
By protecting your assets, you are preventing other businesses from copying your ideas. In a worst-case scenario, another business may even try and pretend that your idea was theirs and copyright it. If this were the case, your business would lose money and investment, as both potential business partners and customers may view your company negatively.
As copyright infringement can have such a large impact on your business, it is important that you have a firm of expert solicitors on hand to keep your assets safe.
Building strong IP in 4 strategies
There are a number of different approaches you can take when theorising, creating and protecting your IPs, and you may find a multi-pronged approach works best for you.
The ideas stage
At the beginning of any concept, you will need to have robust procedures for identifying any potential IPs. Once they have been identified, your IPs will need to be captured and stored appropriately and securely. This could be on a specific file drive or paper in a locked cabinet.
You will also need to be rational and discuss whether a potential IP is likely to be able to be protected or patented. If not, you may have to go back to the drawing board.
Product or service development
You can use the free government service to check whether your idea, phrase or keywords have been trademarked before. This will prevent you from infringing on another business’ IPs. Going forward, you will need to keep the IP in mind whenever you make any plans for your whole business as it can be considered a lucrative asset if everything goes to plan.
IP protection
Once you have checked that your idea is unique and free to be claimed, you can register yours to ensure protection. When the IP is fully protected, you will need to make sure that you have the correct marketing, development and funding in place to further your new product or service.
Commercialisation
Finally, it is time to bring the concept to market. You can go about this the same way you would with any unprotected idea in terms of marketing, development and logistics. It is important to keep the IP in the forefront of your mind as you develop, in case you need to trademark further products and improvements.
