Protecting Your Business with Patents and Trademarks

In the business world it is important to protect the assets that are part of the business. Business owners must protect buildings, personnel, inventory and all intellectual property associated with the business. Protecting a building, inventory and business personnel can be easy by just making sure the property is protected from robbery, accident and fire. Intellectual property can be trickier. They need to be protected by trademarks, patents and copyrights. So, it is important to know what they are.

As a business owner it is important to protect your intellectual property. Whether you are an owner, an inventor or someone in the arts, protection of your property is crucial for your success. A trademark, copyright or patent will help safeguard your work and prevent having your work plagiarized by others.

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. By trademarking these elements businesses can stop other competitors from using a similar look to fool customers into doing business with them instead of the original business.

Patents are issued by the Patent and Trademark Office to protect businesses for inventions that they have created. To receive a patent for the invention it needs to be new, useful and be different than any existing, similar inventions. Patents on new inventions are given for a twenty year time period.

We have put together a number of helpful references for you to learn about trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Whether you are starting a new business or if you wanted to learn more we hope this information was helpful.