What are Intellectual Properties and why do brands need to protect them?

The earliest occurrence of the concept of Intellectual Property emerged in the 6th Century BCE when bakers from Ancient Greece were granted yearlong exclusive rights to make their culinary inventions.

Intellectual properties are the fundamental grants given to creative minds to create or invent indigenous assets like literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names, or images commercially used for trade.

The first official appearance of Intellectual property in terms of original patent and copyright were?The Statute of Monopolies (1624)?and the?British Statute of Anne (1710), respectively.

In the modern world, Intellectual properties can now be considered a piece of artwork or physical property divided into four categories: copyright, trademarks, design rights, and patents.

The advent of trade and commerce witnessed intellectual property as a viable income-generating asset that has helped businesses flourish and provide a distinctiveness over their competitors.

Why do Brands need Intellectual Properties?

The sustainability of a modern brand is a virtue of its continuous development of intellectual properties. Without identifying the consumer’s needs, developing a product, and leveraging intellectual properties, no brand can sustain itself in an ever-growing competitive market.

There are reasons why your brand needs intellectual properties to propel the business.

1. Intellectual properties give a competitive advantage and room for distinctiveness amongst other brands that develop products in the same space.
2. IPs allow companies to be proactive about the upcoming demands and help them identify new opportunities for innovations, eventually increasing their revenue streams.
3. Intellectual properties like trademarks, patents, and copyrights allow brands and individuals to provide customers with distinctive specifications that can only be found for each type of product under a different brand’s product range.
4. IPs allow brands and individuals to promote and release their products in different markets than their origin; while keeping the name, design, colour, or other attributes intact irrespective of the geographical location. Moreover, it allows the right holders to display the product’s origin, city or state — creating a sense of belonging to a geographical indication.
5. Intellectual property enables the creators to sustain and maintain their product’s viability, thus helping their businesses to flourish into new avenues and plunge into novel markets.

Even though intellectual properties allow brands to secure their creative work or better known as properties, they are often struck by unscrupulous individuals or networks of counterfeiters.

Counterfeiting is the crime of exploiting the intellectual properties of a right-holder without providing credits for using attributes of a product like a name, design, typography, colour, etc. Unwitting purchase of deceptive counterfeit products devalues the genuine product and loses the brand’s sales and revenues.

With the growing problem of counterfeit and sprawling fake goods on the shelves, it has become essential for brands to protect their IPs. Furthermore, as these Intellectual Properties are the only medium through which renowned brands can sustain and grow in the market, it is vital to devise strategies to safeguard the creative pieces — eventually securing revenue streams.

Why do brands need to protect their IPs?

Intellectual property infringement and exploitation are rising among brand owners and rights holders. Therefore, protecting IPs is a step toward saying a “No” to cheap products that are packaged with potential risks to health and safety.

Over the years, brands have developed and established various strategies and collaborations to combat counterfeiting. As a result, there will definitely be more effective strategies and mechanisms coupled with technology playing a vital role in the fight against counterfeiting. But, a question that remains constant is — Why do brands need to protect their IPs?

1. It safeguards Ideas

An Intellectual Property is a creative outcome of an idea that emerged in a creative head. When an idea is transpired into a tangible product; whether it may be a trademark, copyright, or a design, it becomes the intellectual property of a rightful owner.

Protecting IPs safeguards these ideas and the processes involved, ultimately inhibiting competitors or frauds from imitating them and earning profit without any consent or legal accord.

Though different items can inspire the idea of any IP, the resultant product needs to have distinctiveness in its attributes. In some instances, the design of a product can imitate an existing product, leading to infringement of IPs and pondering on multi-million dollar lawsuits; as in the case of Apple and Samsung over their smartphones.

Finally, brands need to demonstrate uniqueness in their creations — therefore, protecting the implementation of ideas is vital in order to preserve their uniqueness.

2. Secures Business and its subsequent growth

Suppose a brand is in its initial emerging stage and is looking forward to widening its small business into a massive success. In that case, it becomes crucial for the owners to protect their IPs. Saving your unique products will allow you to compete with competitors instead of taking away the success in an otherwise situation.

Protecting your IP protects your business from losing the early-stage market share and thus results in gradual growth. However, especially for small businesses with unpopular IPs, it can be dangerous if their intellectual property is infringed. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of a responsible owner to legally secure their IPs to protect their business and its growth subsequently.

3. It encourages creators

Intellectual properties are first creation of individuals and then a brand’s property. Protecting an intellectual property appreciates the creator by enriching the market value of any trademark, copyright, or design — thus encouraging them to create more.

Increasing the value of a product by protecting the name, design, typography, or orientation makes a creator enthused about creating various distinctive products. Thus, safeguarding an IP eventually introduces new developments in the market, which leverages the business revenues.

4. Creates Jobs

When a counterfeiter infringes the intellectual property, it reduces the sales volume of a product leading to a loss in revenue. This damage to the financial build of a brand compels them to lay off positions in order to sustain gains and cope with market demands.

However, protecting intellectual property will encourage the brands to hunt more emerging talents who can create state-of-the-art creative solutions. Thus, IP protection enables brands to create a larger space for creative minds, creating more jobs in the industry.

Concludingly, protecting intellectual properties will bring innovative, energetic, and creative minds forward to drive a positive change in the already accelerating IP economy of NFTs.

It is a way to achieve goals, create jobs, generate more income, and tackle global challenges to support emerging communities and aid national & international developments.