At Royse Law Firm, we have been helping our clients protect their valuable assets for years. Intellectual property assets create great value to our clients’ businesses. In fact, it was recently reported that 81% of the value of the S&P 500 comes from these intangible assets.[i] For startup and online businesses the value can be even higher.
So what are these intellectual property assets--think of them as your creative property. Intellectual property is the result or product of your creativity, and the rights to protect intellectual property exist to promote creativity. Intellectual property rights come in many forms including patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secrets.
Given the value to today’s businesses, it is important to protect your company’s intellectual property rights. Protecting your intellectual property involves developing a good a protection plan. Protection plans set a roadmap for protecting and perfecting your intellectual property rights, and help you do the following:
- Identify Your Intellectual Property
- Determine the Best Protection Strategies
- Put Protections in Place
- Enforce and Defend Your Rights
- Review Your Protection Plan Regularly
To take full advantage of intellectual property assets, companies large and small should have a plan in place to develop, protect and expand their rights. Creating and executing on your intellectual property protection plan should happen early in the formation of a business, sometimes it should be one of the first things you do. Many valuable assets have been lost by not putting protections in place quickly.
At Royse Law Firm we encourage our clients to consider intellectual property protections during formation. For more established clients, we encourage consistent review and expansion of protections where needed. If you would like assistant or for more information please contact pperkins@rroyselaw.com
[i] Ocean Tomo’s Intangible Asset Market Value Study, June 15 2010 http://www.oceantomo.com/media/newsreleases/Intangible-Asset-Market-Value-Study
