How to Protect Your Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property or IP covers original discoveries, designs, ideas, inventions, literary and creative works produced by a group or by an individual.  In the earlier years, protecting Intellectual Property is not a big deal, but with information being more accessible and simpler to share and distribute these days because of modern technology, protection your works and creations from thieves, copycats and infringers become crucial. 

Protecting your intellectual property isn’t just necessary to make sure that your innovations will not be stolen or copied.  IP protection also establishes incentives; therefore, anything that you create can actually proliferate and benefit more individuals without violating your rights. 

Here are the ways on how to protect your intellectual property: 

Register Trademarks, Patents, and Copyright 

Patents, trademarks, and the copyright is the common types of Intellectual Property Protection. These grants a person the exclusive rights to his creations, more importantly in terms of commercial gains from using it. 

Copyright 

This applies to the protection of tangible and intangible works. You will own the copyright as soon as you create something even if you did not register it; however, registering your works make it easier to validate your exclusive ownership especially in legal disputes completely. 

Trademark 

Businesses make use of logos, designs, symbols, and phrases in their marketing strategies and business identity as well. These words and images help businesses connect with their customers. In 2020, Snapchat used trademark cease and desist to go after websites that featured Snapchat nudes.  These things, therefore, need to be protected. To ensure your business’s protection, register your trademark. 

Patent

If you have invented a product, equipment, or the machine or chemical composition, filing for a patent is the best way to protect this. Patents are known to carry lawful protection, one that’s  excluding others to create and distribute your inventions without your approval and license. 

Implement Security Measures 

Using internet technology is proven beneficial, but this also carries risks and dangers. If you are using an IT network, you need to ensure that robust and reliable security measures are implemented. You can set passwords to protect your computer network, use Virtual Private Network Access or VPN, and encrypt your data since files can be accessible within your IT system and more. You can also consider investing on top of the line software tools for distributing and storing files. 

Avoid Joint Ownership 

IP might be developed and made by more than one person like in an organization or company with a research and development team. Joint Intellectual Property Ownership grants control on the copyright, patent, or trademark to over one party. That being said, every party owning it might recreate wield, copy or distribute anything that they want to with the intellectual property without consulting and getting the owner’s consent. So to protect your intellectual property, avoid joint ownership as much as possible. 

These are just a few of the many ways on how to protect your intellectual property. If you take the time to research online, you will find out more other ways to ensure ultimate IP protection. It would be best to do the suggested ways mentioned above before you face serious problems concerning your works, inventions, and more.   

Author: Ralph Grant