In business, it is important to protect your assets. Business owners must protect buildings, personnel, inventory, and all intellectual property associated with the business. Protecting your building, inventory, and business personnel can be easy by just making sure the property is protected from robbery, accidents, and fire. Intellectual property can be trickier. Intellectual property needs to be protected by business trademarks, patents, and copyrights. Whether you are a business owner, an inventor, or someone in the arts, protection of your intellectual property is crucial for your success. A business trademark, copyright, or patent will help safeguard your work and prevent having your work plagiarized by others. Every business owner should understand what these protections are and how to use the many different trademark, patent, and copyright resources available.
Businesses have identifiers that are used to help distinguish their brand in the marketplace. Trademarks can be applied to help protect their logos, design elements, font and font style, slogan, and other aspects of the marketing of the business. Trademarking these elements can stop other businesses from using a similar look to fool customers into doing business with them instead of your business.
When employed by a business, patents are issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect an employee's invention or something created by the business owner. To receive a patent for an invention, it needs to be new, useful, and different from any similar inventions that already exist. Patents on new inventions are given for a 20-year time period.
By exploring patent, trademark, and copyright resources put together by those who issue such protections and litigate their use, you can gain a better understanding of how these different tools work and how you can apply them to your business. Before forming a new LLC, make sure to take the proper steps to ensure that your ideas and products will be exclusively yours.
- Copyright Law of the United States
- Copyright Law: Second Edition
- Does Copyright Law Work?
- What Is Copyright?
- U.S. Code Title 17: Copyrights
- Trademark, Patent, or Copyright?
- What Developers Need to Know About Copyright Law
- What Is a Trademark?
- Copyright Law Research Guide
- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- What Is a Patent?
- How Patents Work
- Video Guide to Filing a Patent Application
- Fees and Requirements for New LLCs
- Frequently Asked Questions About Patents
- Avoiding Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Problems
- What Is a Patent?
- Asset Protection
- Patent Law Principles and Strategies
- Obtaining Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights
- What Are Intellectual Property Rights?
- Intellectual Property Basics
- Intellectual Property Concepts and Principles
