An Intellectual property (IP) is a creation that came from a person’s mind; IPs can be either a design, literary work, image, or other concepts. Any idea can be the next big thing, whether it came from a teenager, adult, or even a kid. Anything that has the potential to generate profit must be under protection.
Despite this, various IPs are still prone to theft. Especially today, with the internet being a relatively lawless land, anyone can copy or use other people’s ideas without permission. So, instead of the owner getting the credit, the recognition goes to some random person that just snatched it and is enjoying the fruit of your ideas.
To prevent it from happening, you must be familiar with intellectual property rights, which are laws that protect and grant exclusive use of a person’s creation for a particular time. In other words, it allows you to establish your rights to your intellectual property. If you’re not familiar with these and how you will protect your ideas, this article will tackle different ways how you can protect your intellectual rights.
Patent
A patent provides the owner to protect their Intellectual property to prevent other people from using, duplicating, and selling it without permission. Patents can protect your idea for a specific period, usually around twenty years.
These rights are granted mostly for devices, products, systems, processes, and methods. In a patent, there are specific requirements that your idea needs to meet, such as its novelty, non-obvious, useful for industrial application, or being of value.
There are other benefits you can get from patents aside from protection. It can add value to your business, helping you gain more profit and find investors.
Copyright
Another way to protect your idea is through copyright. If it concerns authorship, it is the perfect option for you. Copyright is a concept where original creations like music, movies, or art pieces will provide rights to their rightful owner. These rights mainly prevent others from using, copying, publishing, or editing the work, especially for profit.
If you find out that other people were not looking over your rights, you can file a case of copyright infringement from using your idea without any permission. You can protect your work with copyright for a long time as the duration of this lasts for a lifetime of the creator and another seventy years after their death, validating your ownership of the work.
Trade Secrets
In a typical sense, the best way to keep your idea protected from theft is to keep it a secret. Trade secrets commonly protect processes, designs, formulas, information, and techniques in manufacturing. In addition, keeping your idea a secret to others allows you to maintain your business value in the industry or market, which leads to more significant sales and profit.
The best examples of trade secrets are the recipe for the famous Coca-Cola, the spice used for the famous Kentucky fried chicken.
Owners usually keep these a secret to prevent others from duplicating them. Safety of your information is essential by implementing a non-disclosure agreement, where only a few people will be able to learn your idea to keep it safe.
Trademarks
Trademarks often serve as any phrase, symbol, or design, that labels for any product, service, or, in other words, the business’s branding. Trademarks are used to identify certain businesses to help consumers avoid confusion regarding product quality.
It also sets the reputation of your business idea as this will be a factor of your company’s success throughout the years. Another benefit of trademarks is that they allow you to keep your novelty as a product. If there would be any attempts to duplicate your idea, they must pay for any damage they have done to the reputation of the original business.
Digital Rights Management System
If you plan to share your copyrighted works in the media, it is prone to digital theft. There are tendencies that other people will leak your works on the internet and will create digital copies from the source.
Specific technologies, such as DRM or digital rights management, can limit people accessing your works. For example, encryption prevents the users from copying, editing, sharing, and other ways of duplication in media.
Final Thoughts
Those are some ways you can protect your idea from other people. No matter how big or small the idea is, as long as it is functional and potentially impacts business or earns a profit, it needs to be protected.
So, if you’re artistic or someone who likes to share ideas with others, you must know your rights. You should be the one receiving the recognition for your Intellectual property, so don’t let anyone steal your ideas and use them for their benefit.
Very informative