Unfortunately, many startups are reluctant to protect their intellectual property rights when it is most needed at the beginning of their business. The problem that comes from this mentality is the delayed time in ensuring the protection of intellectual property which can cause many difficulties or even irreversible problems to the startup both legally and also from a business point of view. Protecting intellectual property is very important, which is why companies like Google, Apple and other tech giants spend billions of dollars to protect their intellectual property.
The intellectual property of a technology startup is usually its most valuable asset. The products and services the company brings to the market will help the startup gain market share and earn revenue, and this can only help the business at most if the company can prevent other competitors or other companies from stealing its concepts, brands and innovations.
Intellectual property is also a major consideration for investors, as they will want to know that your startup has control over all ideas and brands, things you need to develop and market your chosen products and services.
How can you protect your startup?
Most products and services can be protected by a combination of intellectual property rights. For example, computer software may be protected by patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Apple protects certain features of iPhones and other patented products and uses copyright to protect the actual code of its iOS and MacOS operating systems. The company uses trademark law to protect the Apple name, brand and logo that identifies its products and uses the trade secret law to protect the design and components of its future devices.
In general, startups should use non-disclosure agreements to ensure that they can restrict the acquisition of confidential information about their innovations by staff or third parties. It is also important to start the process of registering trademarks and patents quickly, in order to prevent others from registering them first and thus obtaining intellectual property rights over them.
Even after you take the above steps to establish your intellectual property rights, including registration, you still can be infringed by other companies but the best thing is that you can minimise the problems. It will be important, in such cases, to act quickly and stop those who violate your rights, and recover the damages for any losses incurred by them. These steps may only include a notice of termination with the help of your intellectual property attorney, or it may extend to a lawsuit to enforce your rights, depending on the circumstances.
Intellectual property rights must be of paramount importance for a startup to survive. TAS provides you a specialized staff in intellectual property rights who can guide you into registering trademarks, patents and designs for which you want increased protection.
