If you are a business owner and looking to start a business, the first thing you should learn about is the importance of your intellectual property and how you can protect yourself from theft. As a business owner, your ideas and inventions are the most important asset to your company as they make it different and unique from others.
There are four types of intellectual property. As the owner, you have the rightful ownership of them and are allowed to take legal action against anyone who commits a theft. But before that, it is important to understand what each of these properties is. For more information, a Las Vegas Business Litigation Attorney can help.
The four basic types of intellectual property
- Patents.
If your company has invented something new that does not exist anywhere else in the world, you are the rightful owner of that product, and nobody is allowed to use your idea until you permit it. The US Patent and Trademark Office gives you the right to protect your inventions and allows exclusive rights to a few inventors.
There are three types of patents:
- Design patents
- Plant patents
- Utility patents
- Copyrights.
If your company has created something, such as a piece of writing, arts, music, picture, or other intellectual work, you are allowed to ban others from reusing your work without your permission because you have the copyright to it. The person or the company who wishes to use it must first ask for your permission, and you may decide whether you want to let them use, reuse or repurpose it or not.
- Trade secrets.
Trade secrets refer to certain information about your company that differentiates you from other companies. If this information goes into the hands of the competitors, they could potentially use it to harm the original developer of the secret. This information usually gives the company an advantage in the market, and others knowing about it would do no good.
An example of a trade secret may include recipes of a restaurant that make it better than the other competitor restaurants.
- Trademarks.
Along with a name, a company also decides on a unique logo that helps people create their own picture in society. It can be a unique logo, combination of colors, symbols, sounds, or words. For example, McDonald’s, KFC, Twitter, etc., all have certain logos and colors that the entire world knows.
If your company is using a particular logo, no other company in the world is allowed to use it without your permission. If they do, you can file a claim of trademark theft and make them change it.
If you see something in the list that has been stolen from your company, you must hire a Las Vegas Business Litigation Attorney to protect your rights.