Intellectual Property

Intellectual property refers to things created by the brain: inventions, designs, novels, poetry, non-fiction, plays, music, plans, etc., used in commerce. In today's legal system any time you create something it is yours. If you write a book the minute you put the first word down on paper it's yours. You invent something, you own it. You design a logo for your business it's yours.

Certain legal devices have been created to offer increased protections to those who create things. Trademarks protect logos. Copyright protects written work. Patents protect rights to products under certain circumstances.

To see if you're particular creation needs a patent or copyright, you can go to the government office of patents and trademarks to read their policies. If you want a person you can consult an attorney. If you need a patent, I would advise going to a patent attorney rather than doing it yourself.

For most things IP protection sounds good on the surface but isn't practical. It's a long, expensive, and involved process, and unless you have something that is truly unique and non-obvious you may not be successful Go talk to a good attorney. He or she will advise you what you should do and generally don't charge for just a first meeting.

Face it, an attorney doesn't want to spend a big bunch of time on IP work when it's not appropriate, you don't have enough money, or it's not likely to be successful. Usually getting a patent takes 7-8 years and you'd better have at least $100K to cover the initial patent work and all the suits and other legal crap that get's thrown at you. Not counting the time you're going to dump into it.

So, my advice Sirs and Ma'ams (as Radar on M*A*S*H* used to say) invest your ego, time, limited funds, and attention on getting your product ready and to market as soon as you can. Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. Most other people don't want them. And those that do want them can find a way to steal them anyway. Make your product good so that if it does get copied, the copies will not be as good. Make it cheaper, better, more accessible, and easier to use than your competitors' market it correctly and the field of battle will be yours for as long as the window of opportunity is open.

Bill Gates is supposed to have said that he realized that his stuff would be stolen. But he wanted to make sure that if there were people out there stealing stuff his stuff got stolen not that of his competitors'.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. And go read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.