Legally Branded Podcast – Intellectual Property: The Challenges of Protecting Ideas
Even if an idea involves creating something tangible, the product resulting from that idea has many components, which are intangibles, that are necessary to its existence. So if you happen to have a great idea, how do you protect it? In this episode, find out how you can address the challenges of protecting intellectual property.
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Topics Discussed in this Episode:
- The challenges of protecting intellectual property
- The best way to begin to address intellectual property
- How to reduce the legal costs
- The intangibles and their impact
- How to make it easier to build management of IP in the day to day running of your venture
Key Takeaways:
- For many people, an idea is their key to economic success. Therefore, being able to protect its resulting output as intellectual property is crucial if the business is to grow in value.
- People assume that they automatically own intellectual property, but this is not true. An action is required to turn an idea into IP.
- Leveraging IP is how the value embedded in it is realised.
- A new venture, when it’s just in your head, that’s when you need to understand the risks and opportunities.
- The best way to achieve success and avoid wasting unnecessary time and energy down the line is to learn the essentials of trademark and other intellectual property that are involved when turning ideas into something that’s out in the real world.
- Intangible assets cannot be measured unless they are managed.
- For any new venture, the time to think about IP protection and intangibles is when writing the business plan. And the business plan, when it’s written, should set the strategy on IP matters.
Action Steps:
- To avoid losing an opportunity and create valuable intellectual property, first identify what it is you’re going to create, what actions you need to take to capture it and, depending on the IP in question, what other actions you need to take.
- Conduct proper checks of trademark registers. It’s also possible to create a liability instead of an asset where proper checks of trademarks registers aren’t first undertaken.
- Consider IP really early on in the early stages of a project. Get a good understanding of IP and eliminate the risks that dealing with IP in a piecemeal fashion has.
- Focus on the intangibles. This is the way you can preserve the investment of your business in its brand, creative efforts, design, and technology.
Shireen said:
“The name of the game with intellectual property is to be proactive in the early stages of any project when turning an idea into something concrete in the real world.”
“IP knowledge and skills are how you protect yourself. And even if you intend to use a lawyer, you need to know some of it yourself. It’s just not an option to not understand intellectual property in this day and age.”
Thank you for listening!
Look into my Legally Branded Academy Course to upskill yourself and your team, and discover the roadmap for a successful implementation of ideas! It’s not an alternative to use lawyers, it’s simply equipping YOU with the business skills in today’s digital economy.
To access the free audio on How to Trademark a Name, subscribe to this podcast and download all the past episodes, and send an email to [email protected] saying what time of day you did so.
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Links to my books and online courses:
- Books:
- Legally Branded
- Intellectual Property Revolution
- Legally Branded Academy Course
- Legally Branded Monthly
More from Shireen Smith:
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