Understanding the 4 types of intellectual property for businesses in San Diego and Southern California can help you to protect and expand your company and its opportunities. You may be interested in an overview of some of the different types of intellectual property protection available. Protecting your company’s valuable and unique ideas, creations, assets, processes, client and supplier information is an important part of business in today’s competitive environment.
Differentiating between the various types of intellectual property for businesses can sometimes be difficult. Copyrights and trademarks, which often protect the same things, might be 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 the source.
Another part of the intellectual property spectrum is patent protection. Patents give the patent holder the right to prevent others from making or selling the patented invention or process. In order for others to profit from another person’s patent, they would need to negotiate a licensing deal with the patent holder.
Trade secrets are another type of intellectual property for businesses here in San Diego and Southern California. 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 protect this unique data or information.
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.
The experienced business and intellectual property for businesses attorneys at the Watkins Firm 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.
