Six Ways to Protect Your Intellectual Property

An idea might be a dime a dozen, but the right property protected idea can be worth millions to you and your business. Ideas are the core of many new businesses. When you get new ideas, you might be excited to share those ideas with others. Reconsider that thought. Share your ideas too soon, and you may find them under the arm of a competitor.

Why should you be concerned about intellectual property rights? Intellectual property law exists to protect your rights to your inventions and innovations. This doesn't revolve just around your designs or plans. Marketing surveys, research data, even your client lists are valuable items. You need to not only understand what is valuable but also how to protect your assets.

Information security has become even more complicated with the increase of use of the Internet and email in business, though you can take action and help secure your business. Here are six tips on how to protect your intellectual property (IP).

1. Exercise patience before sharing information.

How much do other people really need to know? Early on in the developmental stage of your idea, maybe only a few people really need any information to get things working. Pace yourself, don't let go of your ideas early on.

Assess who needs to see what information, and how much information they actually need to do their job. Withhold any IP that might be unnecessary. You can even break up your databases so that no one has access to all the information at one time. Restrict the exchange of information via email of critical information within the company, to prevent loss of data, either by design or accident.

2. Get a legal team on your side.

Getting an intellectual property lawyer in your corner is a very important step. IP lawyers can make suggestions to further increase your security. They can help you to take the necessary steps to get patents early and keep track of the valuable assets in your company. This ensures your valuable assets are evaluated correctly, and appropriate value is placed.

Don't wait until your property has been taken before you contact someone. You would save valuable time and money having a lawyer on your side before a breach in security happens. Ask for an evaluation of your current situation, including all of your marketing research and contact list. Don't forget to ask about what else can be protected.

3. Get to know intellectual property law.

Understanding your rights to your intellectual property, and the laws, can be helpful toward protecting your rights. Ask questions. Request to be kept up to date on information you might need to know from your legal advisors.

You don't have to get a law degree. Do, however, keep up to date on IP infringements and how you can avoid being a victim. Understanding what is valuable and what needs protecting, like getting an evaluation from an IP lawyer, can help.

4. Make use of nondisclosure/noncircumvention agreements.

For those who are involved in the process of developing and applying your ideas, make sure you get binding nondisclosure and noncircumvention agreements, or NDAs. It doesn't always protect your information, but it does ensure that the people you work with clearly understand that the information you are providing them is confidential. Such a contract will also hold more ground in court. Create clear stipulations on who can see your information and what can be done with it.

Make sure your NDA covers all your valuable IP. Ensure employees or anyone coming into close contact with all or parts of your information sign the NDA. Keep contracts on file and assure all contracts are accounted for before sharing information. Further (and arguable more important) is the clear definition that all intellectual property developed by the employee on the job belongs to the employer.

5. File for proper patents early on.

It is not good for companies to wait too long before filing for the proper protection for inventions. Don't wait until the invention is completed, or the idea is in the final development stages. When you've come up with an idea, talk to your intellectual property lawyer about how to best protect the uses of your idea, and when to consider applying for protection, as well as what type of protection to seek. Creating documentation early on during the process can save a lot of time.

IP protection can be applied for and you can still work 'under the radar' on projects to ensure the sanctity of your inventions. This falls back under only keeping key people informed about your projects. File early and get your IP secured sooner.

6. Keep your eyes on your own paper, please.

Protect yourself further by avoiding using other people's intellectual property. Give the same respect you would want to have for your own IP. Borrowing someone else's IP for your own devices is hard to hide. If you get caught, all of your own work may be suspect, if litigation later ensues. Protecting your IP means ensuring people obey the law, and that includes you.

You do your best to restrict movement of intellectual property and to use the highest forms of security, however, security systems aren't perfect. The good news is that steps can be taken to ensure you are compensated should anything happen. Getting an intellectual property lawyer on your side early, and taking the necessary precautions helps to ensure if anything should be taken, you know exactly what it is and have all the documentation in place to take action quickly.
during hard times really does pay off.

Source : Dave J. Davies

Using Your Intellectual Property Assets to Combat the Recession

A positive outlook and adaptability is key

In times such as these, companies need to do more with less and, therefore, it is essential for them to capitalise on all of their assets.

I am a firm believer that one of any company's biggest assets is Intellectual Property (IP) - an asset that is often not very well utilised by companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Intellectual Property encompasses property and assets resulting from original creative thought such as patents, copyright material, designs and trade marks. Today, IP represents a staggering 90% of the total value of the world's top 2000 companies. Be this as it may, less than 5% of innovations created in the United States are under licensing agreements, leaving billions of dollars worth of IP assets underutilised.

Globalisation and the growth of a knowledge economy have highlighted the importance of intellectual property rights, thereby putting the demand for effective IP management at the heart of all businesses.

Big multinationals regard IP as a strategic asset rather than merely a legal tool, and it follows that the most successful SMEs are also now seeing the need to manage, exploit and capitalise on their IP assets. This involves not merely protecting and administering the IP assets themselves, but also integrating IP into innovation, growth strategies and business models alike by using both the legal and economic functions of intellectual property.

IP management can be divided up into three task areas - innovation support, portfolio management and IP exploitation. Obviously, the exploitation of IP and related tasks has tax implications which must be addressed and optimised.

Tax implications

SMEs can use the same strategies that have already been employed for many years by multinational companies, which consist of localising their value-generating IP assets - such as brands, customer lists and patents - in low-tax jurisdictions.

If properly managed, locating or relocating assets offshore is a relatively simple process and can provide significant benefits.

Steps to take

When clients contact me regarding how best to adapt to the current economic climate, I look for ways for their companies to extract the maximum possible value from the business's existing IP assets by leveraging those assets across their business models. We also work to identify opportunities for them to extract value from IP from outside their respective industry and support their efforts to find potential customers for their IP in unrelated business sectors.

The importance of protecting and registering trademarks, patents, designs and copyrights cannot be emphasised enough. Whether it be a trade mark registered with the Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office of the European Union (OHIM), with the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OAPI) or with the US Department of Commerce, Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO), the protection and subsequent licensing of IP assets is key to any modern company's survival and development.

I would encourage all of our clients and readers to analyse their own business to see if there are any undervalued existing IP assets that they could protect, sell and/or license from a tax-friendly jurisdiction. Jurisdictions such as Cyprus offer good solutions for precisely that purpose. No tax is withheld on royalties payable to a non-resident company when the right is granted to a Cyprus entity for use outside the Republic. Another solution would be to set up an appropriate Mauritius company.

Intellectual property rights play a crucial role in giving companies a lead in a market, and IP is definitely the business asset of the future.

Will companies be able to rise to challenge of turning knowledge into wealth? COBUS GROUP is here to ensure that you can!

I wish you all the best for a successful 2009.

PS: We shouldn't forget that the hugely successful Microsoft was born during the recession of 1974; we saw the founding of Hewlett Packard during the Great Depression, and the genesis of the technology boom of the past decades began during the recession of the early 1980s - which just goes to show that every cloud has a silver lining and that business model restructuring during hard times really does pay off.

Source : Ezine

IP Rights and Perceptions of Traditional Cultures

In the last month The Jakarta Post published two interesting articles related to the issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). First was an article by Mohamad Mova Al'Afghani, a Jakarta-based lawyer and lecturer on Ulema edict on IPR could be misleading (the Post August 9, 2005), and the second was Joseph Stiglitz's article on Intellectual property rights and wrongs, to accommodate whom? (published under Project Syndicate, and republished by the Post on Aug. 18, 2005).

The following article looks at the broader issue of IPR based on the findings of a field trip made to observe how traditional cultures cope with the IPR issue, and whether IPR is healthy or unhealthy for the promotion of traditional cultures.

A group of 10 Indonesian and international scholars, from the U.S., UK, India and Australia, made a two-week trip to Yogyakarta, Solo and Bali, organized by the Social Science Research Bureau (SSRC) and supported by The Ford Foundation. During our trip we met with batik makers in Solo, discussed the IPR issue with some lecturers at Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia (STSI -- Indonesian School of the Arts), Surakarta branch, some Javanese puppet masters and dance creators in Ubud, Bali.

Al'Afghani and Stiglitz pointed out that "Intellectual Property is a concept developed in the West", and "Intellectual Property is important, but the appropriate intellectual-property regime for a developing country is different from that of an advanced industrial country".

Most of the available literature agrees that IPR is a concept born in the West, and it does not really fit the rest of the world.

The basic idea of IPR is good -- to provide compensation to creators, or innovators to foster further creativity. Although the claim sounds good, we have to check how it really operates in the field, in the globalized world, in developing countries, and in the situation where "asymmetric information" -- as Stiglitz opined -- exists.

In the long history of copyright law in UK or in the U.S., one major point is the longer period for a creator, or innovator, to hold a monopoly on the creation from the "public domain". One assumption behind the IPR law is the creator and innovator is granted a period of time that he/she can benefit from his/her creation(s), by receiving royalties, which are deemed the economic right of the creators.

Another right implemented in the IPR law is the moral right, which points to the source of the creation. Citing Joseph Stiglitz as the one who had the idea of "asymmetric information" in a publication, from the moral right point view, is enough. Stiglitz himself says in his last article on the subject, "I am pleased when someone uses my ideas on asymmetric information -- though I do appreciate them giving me some credit."

The IPR regime comes from the individualistic and liberal philosophical point of view, which differs from the belief held by people in the developing countries. Many of our informants during our trip shared their concern for the matter, and for them one of the ultimate virtues that people should pursue is a culture of sharing. Our informants, who practice traditional culture, believe that traditional culture is given from generation to generation in order to share their own values

Preserving traditional culture means that people in the community still practice the culture -- in this sense; prayers, dance, clothes, medicine, folklore, etc. -- and people outside the community are allowed to practice it as long as they know the value behind those rituals. If the outsiders want to practice the same form of traditional culture elsewhere, it is not prohibited -- except for sacred practices -- in which sometimes there is a commercial interest involved.

To them, showing respect for their culture is more important than thinking about the economic compensation

Source : Cafezine