Legally Branded Podcast – Why You Need to Understand These IP Limitations to Be Commercially Savvy
How does understanding the limitations of IP help you become commercially savvy? Indeed, IP needs to be considered carefully when creating, growing or preparing a business for an exit. What are the things we need to know and understand?
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Topics Discussed in this Episode:
- How Google built itself into one of the world’s largest brands
- The IP limitations and why it’s important to know and understand them
- Examples of businesses that spawned copycats
- How venture capitalists make money by exploiting these IP limitations
- The repercussions of becoming too successful with your IP
- The elements of a business model that might be protected
- Other intellectual property rights beyond the big four of copyright, trade marks, patents, and registered designs
- How, when and whether you should release your know-how and ideas
Key Takeaways:
- Any business with ambition to grow should make it a priority to understand how intellectual property rights affect it.
- Intellectual property rights don’t protect ideas; instead, they protect the particular expression of an idea.
- It’s impossible for anyone to keep a profitable niche to themselves, nor is it possible to patent a business format so as to keep a format to yourself.
- Intellectual property rights are primarily limited by geography.
- The fact that IP protection has its limits should not be used as an excuse for not securing any IP protection at all.
Action Steps:
- Increase the protection of your business by holding a wide portfolio of IP.
- Give your business or product a name that’s distinctive enough to qualify for trade mark protection.
- Secure the copyright over your materials.
- Register the design of something like your logo.
- Actively police your intellectual property rights.
- Always put in place appropriate contracts.
- Be smart about how, when and whether to release your know-how and ideas.
Shireen said:
“We live in a world where the prevailing philosophy is to publish and spread your ideas to profit from them. Unfortunately, by sharing your ideas you increase the risk of giving competitors a chance to pinch your ideas, business model or product offerings for themselves.”
“Simply by securing IP rights, you may deter copycat-ism because savvy business people will take note of your rights, rather than infringe them. So the common myth that it’s not worth securing IP rights if you can’t afford to go to court to defend them is misguided.”
Thank you for listening!
If you haven’t already taken the time to fully understand IP, I highly recommend that you sign up to the Legally Branded Academy Course. It’s not expensive and it’s a business course suitable for a worldwide audience.
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Links to my books and online courses:
- Books:
- Legally Branded Academy Course
- Legally Branded Monthly
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