Sunday, November 29, 2009

Ways To Protect Your Intellectual Property

By Johnna Hans

Even intangible property like ideas having commercial worth require safeguarding from persons who might want to misuse them for their benefit without the permission of the creator or owner. Intellectual property rights provide you with legal ownership of your creation and serve as a deterrent to offenders. The most common ways of protecting your intellectual property are discussed below.

The most important thing that you should do is to withhold important information regarding the idea that is in your mind or on paper. You must exercise extra caution while sharing information on public forums, especially on the internet. If you are planning to share your idea with your associates through email, you should make sure that your mail account is protected by a strong password.

It is better to be personally conscious of some of the basic intellectual property laws. This knowledge will help you protect your intellectual property through apt policies and provide protection to your idea against any case of infringement. One such case is when you engage an external party to develop your idea. You must legally bind them to not disclose or use the provided information for any other purpose. One of the best ways of ensuring confidentiality is by making the employees, third parties and others enter into a non-disclosure agreement that gives you a right of legal action.

It is always advisable to take suggestion from a lawyer, who can find out the relevant provisions of law for safeguarding your rights. More often than not, these laws entail complexities that have to be sorted out by an expert on intellectual property matters. The lawyer will be able to tell you how to patent or copyright your creation so that no infringement takes place.

You must also remember that the initial phase of the development of an idea is the most suitable time for consulting an intellectual property lawyer. The sooner an application for your patent or copyright is filed, the lesser will be the hassle at a later time.

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