Tom Jurgensen is a business leader, lawyer and entrepreneur who is also the managing shareholder of Catalyst Law Group, APC, a technology-focused law firm headquartered in San Diego. Here, he talks about the strategies businesses should adopt to protect their intellectual property to the best of their ability.
Most businesses have more than one type of intellectual property to protect. Many of them have all four types, including copyrights, trademarks, patents and trade secrets. So they really need a good and experienced lawyer to figure out what they are going to protect, and how they are going to protect it.
Multiple Types of Protection
In fact, some forms of technology can be protected in multiple ways. For example, software can be protected both with a copyright and a patent. There is a huge strategy which needs to be thought through first - including an element about what to keep as a trade secret, and what to register and put out there in the public domain, particularly in the patent sense.
When you do that, you need to then think about how exactly you will protect your intellectual property. Will you protect it through having a copyright, a trademark, or a patent? There are also special patents called the design patent: Do you need one of those?
So there are all of these options, and they call come with a cost and a time frame. To do what is really the best for your business, you really need someone who is an expert to help you figure out your strategy and make it fit your business goals.
International Maze
In today’s world also, it is not just what you do in your home country, it’s about thinking about the other countries in which you want to market, sell, or distribute your product or services. If you have an international market that’s great; your product can go beyond the United States and it can go global.
Most countries have laws with their own unique slant to them; they are not all the same abroad. So you will need a lawyer who can help you navigate through the international maze as well.
This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.
