If you have ever come up with a unique invention, you may already realize how important it is to protect your intellectual property. Without this protection, any competitor can simply copy your work, put their own brand on it, and sell it as their own. The United States Patent and Trademark Office understands this, and works to ensure that applications for new intellectual property are given their due and protected under US law. The process to be approved for a patent or trademark is extremely rigorous to ensure that everyone gets a fair opportunity, which is why it’s no surprise that patent attorneys in Tampa are very in-demand for inventors.
Read more below to learn about some specific reasons why it is so important to protect intellectual property to help entrepreneurship.
It Encourages Innovation.
It takes a lot of work to come up with a truly useful and unique idea, and part of the incentive is knowing that once you obtain a patent, you will have the ability to capitalize on your invention for a set period of time without knockoff products legally entering the market. If people knew that there was a huge chance that their idea would be taken by a major company as soon as they publicized it, there would be very little incentive to ever disclose new developments.
It Protects Small Businesses.
Much like the first point, smaller inventors would have little to no incentive to release new products if they knew that they would never be able to stay competitive. Could you imagine spending 5 years of your life working on a new machine, only to watch a major corporation snatch it up and put millions of dollars of marketing behind it as “their” new product?
It Helps Establish Brand Trust and Awareness.
When you spend a lot of time working on your brand as well as your products, you are able to establish a level of trust with your consumers when they know that you deliver quality products. If, however, anyone could take your intellectual property and put their logo on it, every new invention could be a repeat of the Hoverboard trend that created so many problems.
It Helps Secure Secondary Revenue Streams.
If you are an inventor but do not want to run a full manufacturing operation to get your product into the world, you are able to license your invention to other companies. When you do this, you collect royalties, sales agreements, or many other models that will generate income for you by allowing other companies to utilize your intellectual property.
You Can Use Your IP Rights For Leverage.
If you are in possession of a valuable patent, then you are able to use the value of that patent as collateral when you are financing to grow your business. This is just one more way that your ideas can turn to money when you take advantage of intellectual property rights. In addition, you can sell your IP along with your company (or separate from the company).
These are just a few of the main things to think about when you are considering the benefits and importance of intellectual property protection. Patents are an incredible asset, and encourage development across the globe, daily. If you have a unique idea and believe that you could monetize it in some way, make sure that you capitalize on IP rights before doing anything else.
