An Easy Guide To Intellectual Property Protection For Startups

Intellectual Property Protection is crucial to every business regardless of its size and scale. However, for Startups, IP rights protection is especially crucial. If you own a startup in its initial stages of development, then you should make sure to put IP protection on your list of top priorities.

What Is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual Property ?or “IP” is a term for the general rights recognized by U.S. Law for creations of the mind all over the nation, including:

Patents?– rights granted to inventors of new, useful inventions.

Trademarks?– rights granted to businesses in regards to the branding of their products and services.

Copyrights?– rights granted to “authors” for tangible expressions of ideas.

Trade secrets?– rights granted to businesses in regards to their unique and valuable business processes, practices, market data, client and customer lists, etc.

8 Steps for Startups to Take for Intellectual Property Protection

Here is a list of 8 important steps you will need to take in order to properly protect your intellectual property:

Step 1:?Hire an Intellectual Property Lawyer

Intellectual property law is complicated and imposes several requirements on IP owners to protect, preserve, and claim their rights over their property. Your startup will need an experienced and skilled lawyer who specializes in IP law to help you create a solid strategy for protecting and managing your intellectual property. Additionally, the help of a lawyer is crucial to avoid common mistakes business owners make when dealing with IP matters, which usually have serious implications.

At Jurado & Farshchian, P.L. you will find the perfect IP Lawyer for your type of business and your unique needs and goals.

Step 2: Identify Your Intellectual Property

Your Jurado & Farshchian IP Lawyer will help you make a comprehensive list of every unique and valuable idea, product, service, invention, name, slogan, market strategy, business process, or proprietary idea that your startup owns.

Once we do that, we will then help you figure out whether the items on the list actually qualify for IP protection.

Step 3:?Make sure you own the Intellectual Property

A key step in the intellectual property protection process is making sure that your startup actually owns that property and no other individual or company has grounds for a potential claim for the rights.

Step 4:?Research Your Intellectual Property

Once you have a list of the significant IP of your startup, you will need to confirm that your IP is, in fact, unique and original and can be protected under your name or the name of your company.

No matter how original we think an idea is, there is always a possibility that someone else came up with it before us.

There are many ways to determine whether your intellectual property is original and has never been registered. As your attorneys, we will make sure to thoroughly research your IP in order to determine how original and protectable it actually is.

Step 5: Avoid Enabling Public Disclosure

When it comes to patentable inventions, confidentiality is crucial. Once an invention has been disclosed to the public by the inventor, there is only a one-year time frame to file a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Disclosing too much information about your invention before the time is right can be incredibly risky, so you should be especially careful with that.

Your Jurado & Farshchian IP Lawyer will help you avoid EPD as your product or service is being developed and tested – making sure there are no unwanted information leaks.

Step 6:?Protect Your Intellectual Property from Investors

If you are in the process of looking for investors for your startup, you will inevitably need to disclose some of your proprietary information to them. To avoid any loss of your IP rights, you should make sure to:

• Keep records of who has been given access to your proprietary information; and
• Have all potential investors sign non-disclosure agreements confirming that they will not share or copy your intellectual property.

Step 7:?Protect Your Intellectual Property from Contractors and Employees

As your attorneys, we will?draft non-disclosure agreements ?for your employees and contractors in order to prevent them from stealing your valuable intellectual property assets and disclosing them to your competitors.

Step 8:?Protect Your Intellectual Property Globally

Many startups fail to acknowledge the importance of protecting their intellectual property rights outside of the United States. Although protecting your IP in the U.S. is the first step, it is not the only step. Startups need to consider an international IP protection strategy if they believe they will eventually grow into an international business.

Protecting your Intellectual Property is not an easy task; fortunately, you will not have to do it alone. Jurado & Farshchian, P.L. is here for you.

There is a team of experienced IP Lawyers ready to help your startup rise to the top just one phone call or email away.

To learn more about our Intellectual Property services and other ways we can help your startup grow, call us at?(305) 921-0440 ?or send us an email to?[email protected] .

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