Business

Why you should start protecting your intellectual property even as a new business owner

Startups and business owners often find themselves caught up in the day-to-day running of the business. From the perspective of new business owners, especially business owners in the training, speaking, and coaching areas, landing the next deal, creating new programs, and paying the bills always seems to take center stage.

If you are a new business owner, or if you are new to the speaking, training and coaching industry, this article is written especially for you. It’s vital to take a moment to consider how important intellectual property, despite whatever other priorities you may have at the moment, to protecting your intellectual property could potentially make or break your business. You can do this by registering trademarks for your brands, logos, and code names; copyright of your training materials, syllabi and books; or by creating a patent for any invention, device or prototype you have.

Let me convince you why you should be involved in intellectual property protection, especially at the start of your business.

Reason #1: Protecting your intellectual property helps you avoid future costs and problems

By protecting your rights to the content and materials you’ve created, you essentially minimize any opportunity that others (especially your competitors) may claim your intellectual treasures in the future. For example, if you have registered your logo as a trademark, and in the future, when your business is booming, your future competitors will know that they will be legally disadvantaged if they directly copy your trademarks. This thus creates a barrier to prevent them from doing so. And in the event that they still decided to copy your trademarks, the legal directives are in your favor.

Reason #2: You can monetize your intellectual property

By creating a treasure trove of copyrighted materials, with a reputable brand protected by trademarks, you can monetize these intangible assets by selling the business in the future or by raising capital from investors from expanding the business.

Reason #3: It can solidify your brand

Ultimately, your trademarks and copyrighted materials represent the competitive advantage your business has over your competitors. By protecting them, you reduce the chances that others can claim the intellectual assets that are truly yours. Therefore, your competitors will have to innovate and work harder to produce something better if they ever want to diminish the market power of your intellectual properties.

Conclusion

Here are the three big reasons why you should consider protecting your intellectual property, even if you’re just a new business owner. The long-term benefits of doing so are plentiful, and you may very well be building the next multi-million dollar IP business!

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