Are you struggling with the task of identifying intellectual property in your business here in San Diego or across California?  What are the basic types of intellectual property (IP) present in most businesses and how can the Watkins Firm help to identify and protect these valuable business assets?

Business intellectual property usually refers to unique ideas, creations, inventions, assets, processes, presentations, artistic works including logos, symbols, trade names, computer software and even images.

Identifying intellectual property in your businesses and protecting it can sometimes be difficult.  Copyrights and trademarks, which often protect the same types of things, can also be easily confused for each other.  A copyright protects the author of a work by giving exclusive control over the duplication and use of that work.  A trademark, on the other hand, is meant to protect consumers by ensuring that when they buy a brand name, they are getting products exclusively from a specific branded source.

Trade secrets are another type of intellectual property for business, and require not only identification, but limited access based upon need.  These are secrets that a company or business person owns, which give the company an advantage.  This type of information would be valuable to competitors and employees who might wish to take what they’ve learned and compete against your business.  A trade secret strategy requires your business to take steps to identify, secure and control access to this unique data or information.

Pro-Tip: “most business lawyers handle some amount of IP, but intellectual property is not all the same. The way you do business is IP. The way you communicate your contracts, your customer list, they’re all different types of intellectual property. And then there’s the formula for Coca-Cola, that’s an intellectual property, but that’s a trade secret and that’s different as well. So we do draft agreements that include clauses and protections and descriptions of intellectual property. ” – Dan Watkins, Managing Partner

It is also important to have contracts in place because they can be the cornerstone of a company’s intellectual property.  For instance, when working with independent contractors there should be a transfer of ownership for anything created by the contractor, allowing your company to maintain full control of the associated intellectual property.  IP may require confidentiality agreements and/or non-disclosure agreements for any internal or external personnel who may come into contact with it or need to apply it in their own work.

Identifying intellectual property in your business is an important step in protecting the integrity of the company itself.  The experienced intellectual property and businesses attorneys at the Watkins Firm have 40+ years of experience serving the business, science and tech, real estate and medical / healthcare communities here in San Diego and across California.  We work with you and your company to identify and protect intellectual property.  We help you to understand opportunities associated with licensing and distribution of your company’s IP to increase market penetration and profitability.

We invite you to review our podcast Episode 19 – Your Business Attorney is a Valuable Partner as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.