It can be exciting to come up with a new idea that no one has thought of before. When you have that light bulb moment, it can be tempting to let people know about it. Unfortunately, letting people know about your ideas can end up backfiring on you. Many people are quick to steal other people’s ideas and inventions.
It is important to take steps to protect your intellectual property.
1. Hold Off On Filing Patents.
A simple way to protect your intellectual property is the hold off on filing a patent. Once a patent is filed, others can create similar products using workarounds without violating any intellectual property rights.
2. Have Employees Sign Non-Disclosures.
If you work with a team or have employees, it is important to have them sign non-disclosure agreements to cover the security of your intellectual property. Obtain assistance to have the non-disclosures well-written to keep your ideas safe from being taken. Once they are created and signed, find a notary by clicking here and have them notarized right away.
3. Separate Teams Working On Projects.
When you divide the work of your projects between teams who have no contact with each other, it will mean no one team has access to all aspects of your intellectual property. To successfully undermine your sanctity and security, all teams would have to get together to steal your property. The difficulty of this makes it a great security measure.
4. Avoid Joint Ownership.
If possible, avoid allowing joint ownership of intellectual property relevant to your business. Many individuals encounter problems later in the development phases that make going forward in a partnership much more difficult. This often hurts all parties involved.
5. Implement Strong Access Controls.
Another tip for safeguarding your intellectual property or trade secrets is to keep all forms, documents, manuscripts and other data containing your ideas in a safe storage area that is protected using an access-management and identity solution. Passwords alone are becoming obsolete and it is becoming more essential to store your intellectual property in a system that utilizes adaptive authentication procedures.
6. Exact-Match Domain Names.
If you are able to, obtain an exact-match domain name as an intellectual property security measure. This is a great way for protecting the trademarks you own. This tip may be more costly in the short run, but the number of benefits it offers will prove to be unrivaled.
7. Publish Far And Wide With Attribution.
To this day, one of the best ways to protect your intellectual property is to file your patent first. Another common way to protect your trade secrets is to make sure your intellectual property is referenced and published widely. Be sure that each time you mention anything online, the name of your company is accurately attributed. Your patents will have more support when your IP is seen online often.
8. Open-Source IP.
A great way to give your IP and ideas a competitive advantage is to open-source them. While this may seem counterintuitive, tapping into a large community of developers will allow your company to focus on getting your intellectual property executed with agility and speed to stay in front of the competition.
Aside from these great tips, a classic way of protecting your intellectual property is to simply keep quiet and remain out of sight until you’re ready to file your patent. Limit the exposure to your secrets and implement a digital rights management system to keep your intellectual property safe and well-hidden.
