5 Tips for Guarding your Company Against Intellectual Property Threats
Introduction: Safeguarding your Company against Intellectual Property Threats
Managing a company's intellectual property can be a challenging yet fruitful endeavor, especially when time restrictions, workloads, and finances are considered. Despite patents and trademarks, registered intellectual property can still be vulnerable to infringement, particularly in today's internet-centric business world. Let's look at the concept of intellectual property theft and how to secure your intellectual assets to fortify your company's security.
Understanding IP Theft
IP theft involves the clandestine act of stealing and misappropriating innovations, brand names, and original products from individuals and organizations. This issue has garnered significant attention in IP management, and its negligence has historically resulted in significant financial losses for both startups and well-known firms.
Beyond financial damages, IP theft brings about various consequences, including:
- Non-compliance with national trade and business standards
- Legal complication
- Diminished competitive strength
- Tarnished reputation
- Erosion of customer trust and brand credibility
- Impediments to the overall business development
Hence, the importance of safeguarding against IP threats cannot be stressed enough. Here are key highlights for business leaders to consider to prepare for and mitigate these risks effectively. Moreover, having a trusted IP Lawyer/Firm by your side is crucial.
Here are 5 tips for guarding your company against IP Threats:
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Hire specialized IP Representation
Recognized IP representation comes with advantages that surpass the obvious protection. As the name suggests, IP watch operations ‘watch’ several mediums for possible infringement after your IP has been registered and thus play a vital role in the enforcement phase of your IP. This will be touched upon in further detail, at a later stage.
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Creation of Non-Disclosure Agreements for Employees and Business Partners
An NDA is a contract that legally binds its parties to a confidential relationship and serves as a crucial tool for safeguarding IP and private information.
It does this by providing several notable advantages such as:
Legal Repercussions: If a party violates their NDA, legal recourse can be taken against them, resulting in a potentially large amount of financial damages and injunctions.
Defining the Scope of Protected Information: NDAs define the extent of protected information, eliminating misconceptions and establishing a framework for permissible uses.
Duration and Customization: The terms of an NDA can be woven to fit specific requirements, allowing the parties involved to determine the terms and conditions that best suit the unique nature and circumstances of the given matter. Furthermore, the agreement can be extended beyond the original term, providing long-term protection.
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Create a Non-Compete Clause for Employees and 3rd Party Contractors
A non-compete clause is a legal agreement that generally serves to prevent former employees from working for competitors (for a limited time duration) after their employment period has ended.
It aims to prevent the risk of competitors acquiring valuable information that would hamper the company's competitive potency, including sharing IP secrets.
Aside from strengthening the protection of your intellectual property, having non-compete clauses has been found to offer other benefits such as Reduced Turnover Rate, Increased Employee Loyalty, Cost-cutting in the Hiring Process, and Encouragement to invest in staff training.
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Perform a Yearly IP Audit
As time passes and the market landscape changes, so will the value of your intellectual property assets and services. Concurrently analyzing your IP inventory allows you to secure both your tangible and intangible assets by:
- Assisting you in understanding how your assets are used (or not).
- Identifying assets that someone else owns and uses.
- Seeing if an asset infringes on the rights of another party or vice versa.
- Determining the right action to be taken for each asset.
- Implementing and customizing new or existing IP policies, standards, or procedures, as per the jurisdiction you are operating in.
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Enhance the Protection of your Cybersecurity
As previously noted, the risk of IP theft has increased enormously as the internet has been fundamentally intertwined into our everyday routine. As a result, businesses must now exercise due diligence to close gaps in their cybersecurity and reduce the likelihood of their IP being compromised.
The following are some general measures that are used to do this:
Employee Education: Informing your staff on cybersecurity threats and what constitutes the company's intellectual property promotes awareness about how to handle sensitive data with care. This heavily applies to e-based businesses such as online stores and SAAS.
Developing data security policies and auditing user rights: This normally entails changing employees' login credentials regularly and implementing required authentication to keep track of who has allowed access and who has had it revoked.
Conclusion
As the integration of using the online environment has grown necessary for everyday operations, so has the menace of intellectual property theft, demanding constant attention to protect your intellectual assets.
In the face of escalating threats, Abou Naja Intellectual Property encourages you to take decisive action to safeguard your innovative legacy. Moreover, we urge all business owners to ensure that their IP is secured, before sharing it with 2nd or 3rd party users.
At Abou Naja IP, our experts can assist you in fortifying your legal framework and ensuring the long-term vitality of your intellectual assets. Contact us today at connect@abounaja.com for a complimentary consultation.
