Posts Tagged ‘protecting business ideas’
Up Your Business Value By Leveraging On Intellectual Property
February 16th, 2010
If you look at the books of large companies these days you will see that their intellectual property (IP) adds a tremendous amount of money to the balance sheet. In fact most businesses fixed assets are minute in comparison to the brand and IP value. This tells us something very interesting – yes – how much more would your business be worth if you invested more in IP recognition and registration?
When a company strategically identifies, maintains and secures its intellectual property rights then this can obviously have a major affect on the company in terms of its overall operation, including its ability to attract investors, enter into specific business partnership, and in the end increase its value when it comes to sale or business merger.
Large companies who have mega-brands like Google and Pepsi are often quoted when it comes to their brand value as out-valuing their fixed assets hundreds of times, yet it is easy to forget how these companies also became so huge.
We live in an information world now. Information companies like Google can be valued at a few billion dollars a few years after creation only because information is now so valuable. Information is a tradable asset only when it is protected by IP laws and other laws. Every company, big or small should consider intellectual property seriously. It is one of the best investments literally you can make with a company if the IP value is capitalized within the business and added to the balance sheet.
It is highly recommended for businesses of all sizes to be aware of intellectual property topics and create special strategies that will proactively ensure that their intellectual property (IP) will at all times be properly legally protected.
Here are a few areas to help you start focusing on by first identifying the areas that you are creating IP in:
1. Trademarks – these protect parts of your overall brand such as mottoes, pictures, names.
2. Copyrights – these cover the trade protection of expressive items such as documents, books, images, telecasting, sound recordings etc.
3. Trade secrets – these protect proprietary information, internal know-how, systems and procedures that are deemed to give you a business competitive edge
4. Patents and industrial designs which protect specific types of ideas and inventions and processes
Considering the above items the first step that you need to do is identifying existing intellectual property (IP) within your company. You may be amazed by how much you may have. Once all sources of a company’s intellectual property have been identified, processes should be put in place that enable the company to easily keep track of all existing intellectual property and all new intellectual property . Then someone needs to be given the responsibility to manage the IP.
Once the key intellectual property has been identified then the next step is to look at what should be registered to protect it legally. This is where a good patent lawyer comes in to play. Good intellectual property lawyers don’t come cheap but seeing the value that is created then it pays off to invest for all your major intellectual property.
Learn more about Trademark Registration Singapore and discover how does a trademark lawyer and IP protection increase the net worth of your business rapidly. This and other unique content ‘copyright’ articles are available with free reprint rights.
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What Does Trademark Infringement Mean?
February 2nd, 2010
Owing to the stiff competition in the market, trademark infringement has become a serious problem. The examining of unauthorized use of a trademark by a firm other than the owner of the trademark needs certain factors to be taken into careful consideration before reaching the final conclusion on the alleged infringement.
The primary aspect is to look into the similarity between the two trademarks with respect to design, sound, meaning, spelling and pronunciation. If there is a lot of similarity between the two in any one of these aspects, then there is a good chance that the trademarks will create confusion in the minds of the consumers. This in turn would lead to commercial loss to the company that possesses the trademark as the customer will not be able to differentiate their items from the fake ones. Even slight alterations in spelling are not permissible, if the pronunciations of the names end up being identical.
The second factor to be taken into account is the link between the items and services provided by the manufacturers having similar trademarks. If they are not related, there will be much lesser chance of confusion even if they have very similar trademarks.
Another important factor is how conscious the consumers of the items or services in question are. Even similar trademarks can’t confuse smart customers, who go for a thorough background study of an item before buying it. Sophisticated consumers are armed with a thorough knowledge of competing products, and so they do not fall under the influence of closely resembling trademarks.
This confusion is generally confronted by an average buyer, who buys products in a hurry and does not pay attention to the finer details. He would not be conscious of the finer differences between the two trademarks, which in turn will increase the chance of his purchasing a counterfeit. This is one of the most common examples of infringement of a trademark that has to be tackled legally.
Discover more about Trademark Registration Singapore and discover how does an Intellectual Property protection increase the net worth of your business very fast. You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.
