The How-To: Protecting Your Intellectual Property As A Small Business

A strategic handling of a company’s intangible assets can catapult small, local businesses toward greater global recognition.

Intellectual property is the life blood of any organizationand for small businesses, even more so! A strategic handling of a company’s intangible assets (e.g. trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and patents) can catapult small, local businesses toward greater global recognition. By developing and protecting their best-in-class technologies and products, they can establish themselves as market leaders and industry experts, thereby attracting a sizeable clientele.

This is especially the case for small businesses that rely predominantly on the fruits of their intellectual labor. However, innovation forms only half the equation in the success and growth of a business. In today’s increasingly digitalized market environment, it’s becoming equally important for small businesses to adopt measures to protect their intangible assets– whether those assets are inventions in the making, or proprietary information that keeps a small business competitively fit. As such, there are a number of key steps that can translate intellectual property protection into advantages for your small business.

PART 1: THE WHY

Protecting intellectual property is essential for every company, big or small. Why? Firstly, cases of intellectual property theft are too common to ignore nowadays. And the size of a company never matters- startups and small businesses are no less affected. In fact, they may feel the consequences of theft even more acutely than their larger counterparts. When just starting out, you may underestimate the likelihood of someone stealing or copying your company’s technology, designs, and trade secrets. But actually, it happens more often than you might expect.

This is why it’s crucial to take proactive steps to protect your intellectual property, for example by registering your trademark, applying for a patent, or implementing technical and organizational measures to safeguard your business secrets– and to do so as soon as possible. If you ever need to defend or assert your rights, as an intellectual property owner, these steps will have already set you on the correct course of action. Plus, they can give you peace of mind, as you continue your focus on developing your business, growing your client base, etc.

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