By: Mohd Rushan
The Importance of Protecting Your Intellectual Property
‘Intellectual property‘ basically refers to anything you create. This includes content (such as blog posts), original designs or images, or even e-books. It also includes your brand elements, such as your logo, brand name, and any other distinguishing features. And finally, it includes inventions, or new processes and technologies.
Protecting your business’ intellectual property is vital. If you don’t protect your content, others can copy it, pass it off as their own, and use it to make money. The same is true for your inventions – protecting them ensures that you alone generate revenue from the sale of your intellectual property.
Failing to protect your brand could lead to serious damage to your business’ image. Without protection, your brand may be used by others to deceive customers or diminish your brand’s reputation. The consequences of not protecting your intellectual property are severe and could cost you a significant amount of income.
The Difference Between Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents
In short, copyrights, trademarks, and patents all protect different types of intellectual property. Knowing when to apply the right protection ensures all of your creations stay safe in your control.
Copyrights
Copyrights protect content such as text or images, and determine how content can be legally reproduced and distributed. You may be familiar with copyright as the protection used for books and movies. Copyright laws are what make it illegal to record films in theaters.
You obtain a copyright the moment you produce content and share it. If you write a blog post and publish it online, you technically have the copyright to it. However, unless you register the copyright, you don’t have much power if someone steals and redistributes your content.
Copyright is violated when you reproduce and distribute someone else’s content without permission. It sometimes also extends to creating derivative works, or content that is notably similar to the copyrighted content.
Trademarks
Trademarks protect your brand, including your logo, brand name, and other features associated with it. This could include a slogan, a packaging, or even certain patterns. Burberry has trademarked the check pattern used on many of their products, for example.
Much like a copyright, you obtain a trademark as soon as you start using it, but it’s difficult to hold legal influence without registering it. Your trademark is violated if another company uses your brand’s identifying features, or confusingly similar ones, to sell products or services.
Patents
Finally, patents protect inventions, new technologies, or processes. A patent prevents others from recreating and distributing your invention for a specified period of time, usually twenty years. This enables you to reap all the rewards of your invention when it’s first on the market.
To obtain a patent, you must submit an application that includes careful documentation of how you came up with your idea and executed it. It’s crucial to keep your invention confidential before receiving your patent, or others may recreate your invention, making your application invalid.
Violating a patent consists of using or distributing an invention without permission. You may choose to allow certain parties to legally use or distribute your invention by selling licenses.
Read more >> http://www.moneywasp.online/the-difference-between-copyrights-trademarks-and-patents-and-how-they-affect-your-business-4/
