How you can protect intellectual property in an electronic world

Apr 26 2018      On Behalf of  David M. Duree & Associates, P.C.      Intellectual Property Litigation

More and more companies are using digital technology, user interfaces, computer code and many other technologies to improve daily operations and customer service. But, is your business protected in today’s digital world? You need to be careful with protecting your company’s ideas and investments or risk losing them to copycats. That’s where intellectual property comes in handy in O’Fallon, Illinois.

There are various ways you can protect your intellectual property in Illinois. Some of those methods include the following:

• Copyright
• Trademark
• Patents
• Know-how
• Database rights
• Registered designs
• Integrated circuit topography rights

The rules for each of these methods differ and protect different aspects of intellectual property, which can also be protected for free and automatically if the situation calls for it.

It is vital to the success of your business to understand how to protect your intellectual property, including all of the methods mentioned earlier in this post. You need to learn what it is you can protect, how it can be protected and what you need to do in order to protect that property as soon as possible.

For the longest time, copyright has been used to protect software code. Because of the track record here, it is easy for most to identify the areas of software that need to be captured and protected using copyright.

Now that you know how important your intellectual property is, it’s time to begin protecting those ideas that your company is putting to use on a daily basis. You can do so by patenting ideas and being on the lookout for copycats in Illinois.

Source: Computer Weekly, “Protecting your intellectual property in a digital world,” accessed April 20, 2018