PROTECT YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY                                                    

                                                                                       The six steps to securing products and inventions.

Know the value of information. Intellectual assets are central to many businesses and relevant to all, even if it is only a matter the corporate logo. You need to be aware of intellectual property rights to able to make informed business decisions. If you do not protect your intellectual property, you can't exploit it.

Conduct a knowledge audit. It's not just inventions and secret recipes that matter, organisations need to find a way to catalogue all the business-critical information that rests in people  heads, from the sales manager's understanding of the best way to approach key clients to the factory foreman's knowledge of how to adjust equipment settings in damp weather. You need to reduce the amount of information that is known exclusively by one person or only a few people.

Obtain legal protection. Once you have conducted the audit, see what should be the subject of registered protection and take steps accordingly. Consider whether you need international protection; registering a trademark in EU does not protect it overseas. With trademarks patents, you are trying to stop other people using it, whereas with copyright you tend to be allowing people to use it, as long as they use it properly.
The law isn't everything. The law can't protect everything, so learn to keep secrets. The best protection for products and invention is registered protection, but too frequently people get wrapped up in what van be protected by patents and we forget about the valuable knowledge around it that fleshes out the product or odds value.

People are central. Protecting existing intellectual property is important but organisations also need to consider where new intellectual assets will come from.

Contracts and confidentiality. Ensure that all employment contracts include a confidentiality clause making it clear that staff are not to disclose work-related information.