For many companies, intellectual property (IP) protection is about more than safeguarding ideas—it is about protecting integral business assets that are key to the company’s long-term survival. Your IP is unique to your business, and is likely to form the basis of your past, present and future success.
If you do not secure your IP, you could be putting these ideas, and your whole business, in jeopardy. Read on to find out exactly why securing your company’s IP is so important, and how Global Voices can help safeguard your business’ intellectual property.
1. Give your ideas legal protection
Securing your IP enables your business to keep its ideas by giving them legal protection. This is especially important considering the prevalence of IP infringement. A study by the Federation of Small Businesses revealed that 25% of the organisations it surveyed had had their IP rights infringed in the previous five years. The press is also constantly flooded with stories of mega corporations taking each other on in court over IP disputes. Just recently, Samsung were forced to pay Apple $539 million for violating their iPhone patents, and Match Group, the owner of dating app Tinder, announced at the start of the 2018 that it would be suing rival app Bumble for patent infringement.
With infringement prevalent at all levels, securing your IP is essential. You’ll not only be able to fight any violations in court to ensure that you—and only you—are the ones that can use ideas that your business came up with, but you will receive damages if somebody does so. It really is a win-win situation.
2. Protect your business’ growth
As we have touched upon, protecting your IP is absolutely crucial to your business. Your unique products or services are what will bring your business success, as well as a market share in your field. If you do not safeguard these ideas, your competitors can take advantage of your success. By stealing your ideas they’ll be able to reduce your market share, which can halt your growth and lead to loss of revenue. By securing your IP, you give yourself legal footing and help to protect the growth of your business.
3. Ensure originality and avoid violating existing IP
As well as protecting your business from external copyright infringement, securing your IP also ensures that you yourself have not violated the IP of any other companies. When applying to register a patent, you will have to carry out an extensive search of existing patents to ensure that your idea is not infringing somebody else’s invention. Whilst you can search your patents yourself, this can be a time consuming process, and it may be worth hiring an external company like Global Voices to do this on your behalf.
If you simply went ahead with creating your product without registering a patent for it, you would run the risk of inadvertently copying somebody else’s idea. This could not only lead to you to paying out hefty damages, but could also besmirch your reputation, both of which could seriously hinder your company. This applies to all forms of intellectual property, so securing your own IP again helps to safeguard your growth as a business.
Whilst it may be time consuming and seem difficult to do, securing your IP is nowhere near as daunting as it sounds, especially as here at Global Voices, we can do this for you. As we have seen from the above points, doing so is well worth the effort.
For copyright, most protection is free and automatic by law, so you probably will not have to apply for this. If you want to apply for a patent, registered design or trademark, you can do so through the UK Intellectual Property Office. You can either register your IP yourself or enlist an external company to undertake this process on your behalf. Here at Global Voices, we can help you prepare and register a patent application and can conduct patent searches to ensure that you aren’t infringing somebody else’s IP. Get in contact today to see how we can help you.