By: Gabriel Eze
Here's the thing—one of the most important aspect of your business is the intellectual property of your startup. Ignore it and pay dearly for it. They say, great products and services with superb execution make great companies but then strong brands make an even greater company. By strong brands, I mean brands with comprehensive IP protection. Strong brands create great value—both commercial and intellectual assets that attract your product and services to your target market. What readily comes to mind when Intellectual Property (IP) is mentioned are the more common aspects such as copyright, industrial designs, patents, trademarks. The less common IP or IP-related rights include database rights, geographical indications, plant varieties, trade secrets, traditional knowledge, etc.
For startups, here's a quick one on some types of IP that may be relevant to your startup and that your startup badly needs to protect:
> Copyright
Copyright protects original literary, musical, and artistic works. It grants authors or creators exclusive right to produce, distribute, assign, license, or do other things with the work. If you have a web application or a website, then you will need to protect the source codes used to build it. You may need a contractual agreement on who should own the app or website especially if you contract a developer to build the app or website for you. Copyright protection takes care of this. Depending on the nature of startup, you will need to protect your copyright works accordingly. One of the most common copyright works startups often wish to protect, depending on the industry or sector they belong, include software programs (limited to the original source code used in writing the program only); marketing materials including ad copies and jingles; entertainment works including cinematography, motion picture, and musical works; web publishing including podcasts, training videos, web contents, etc. Any of these copyright works could become a valuable intangible asset for your startup especially if you know what you are doing.
Read more >> https://www.mondaq.com/Nigeria/Intellectual-Property/901604/Why-You-Badly-Need-To-Protect-The-Intellectual-Property-Of-Your-Startup
