Do you know how to identify your company’s intellectual property?

Jul 25 2018      On Behalf of  David M. Duree & Associates, P.C.      Intellectual Property Litigation

Intellectual property is vital to the success of any company. This property can be thoughts, ideas, plans, products, services and just about anything else an employee creates while on the clock. One of the most important questions you need to ask is if you actually know how to identify your company’s intellectual property. If you don’t, then this is a post you need to read.

Let’s first begin with the types of intellectual property that are recognized today. There are four of them right now and they are patent, trademark, trade secrets and copyright. Since these four types of intellectual property cover just about anything and everything, it’s highly unlikely that your company doesn’t have any intellectual property.

There are a lot of companies that don’t have a system in place to track intellectual property. In order to make this happen your organization needs to create a database that tracks intellectual property based on each division of the company. The documents associated with the property should be labeled appropriately and then correlated to the proper service or product offered by the company.

Once a database is in place, you can begin protecting the rights of your intellectual property. The protection of this property will be much easier with all of it filed in the database. You won’t have to scour the company for different documents since they are all located in one place.

Identifying the intellectual property of your company can be challenging if you don’t know where to begin. Once you identify this property, you need to protect it from theft by competitors in Illinois.