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Protect Your Company Name and Idea

Fortunes have been lost, families torn apart and friendships ended; all because no one took the time to create a paper trail documenting the ownership of the ideas that went into developing a business.

While many entrepreneurs are reluctant to broach the subjects with those who may be working with them, discussing the derivation of and credit for business initiatives can forestall a lot of grief down the line. In addition to certifying intellectual property rights amongst the owners and contributors to a venture, it is also absolutely imperative that unique products, services and company identifications be protected almost from the moment they are conceived.

When most people contemplate shielding their creative products they generally think of patents. Patents may indeed be the correct way to protect some endeavors. However, there are very strict standards imposed upon receiving a patent. Trademarks and copyrights may constitute better vehicles for safeguarding a great many aspects of most projects.

What differentiates these types of intellectual property protection and how should you go about applying for them?

Patents.
• According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a patent is “the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.” Most patents have terms of fourteen to twenty years from the date of filing. The patent right excludes “others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention in the United States or importing the invention into the United States.” Inventions must be new and non-obvious. Additionally, they must be described in such a way that an ordinary person with skill in the field could manufacture and use them. Improvements to existing items or processes may also be entitled to patent protection.
Patents by themselves do not guarantee the success of any enterprise. They are also expensive and time consuming to obtain. Although it is possible to file for and receive a patent by oneself, even the USPTO recommends considering the use of a patent attorney. Not properly researching existing patents or skipping one integral step in the process can invalid the entire procedure. Also be aware that the UPSTO grants the patent but it is up to the owner of the patent to defend it.

Patents aren’t all cut from the same cloth. Deciding the category into which an invention falls is the first difficult choice an entrepreneur will have.

1. Utility — the functional aspect of an invention and/or design or any new or useful improvement to said invention and/or design.
2. Design — a unique decorative appearance.
3. Plant – the first invention and/or discovery of a distinctive plant or plant characteristic which is subsequently reproduced asexually.

Copyrights.
• A copyright protects rights of authorship that have been expressed in a tangible form. Thus, a book, a song or a painting may all be copyrighted. Copyrights are registered by the Library of Congress for the life span of the author plus an additional seventy years. Only the copyright’s owner can reproduce, distribute, perform or display a copyrighted entity.

Trademarks.
• Trademarks serve to “protect words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services from those manufactured or sold by others.” The derivation of the items may also be indicated by its trademark. Trademarks remain in force as long as they are being used for a business purpose.

As with patents, the process of copyrighting and/or establishing a trademark is extremely complicated and can be voided by the slightest mistake. The expense of an attorney expert in the areas of copyrights and trademarks is money well spent.

In all three cases – patents, copyrights and trademarks – the business owner must take extreme care to safeguard the ideas upon which they are based until the process for protecting them has been initiated. In some cases, merely discussing an idea in a public forum can make it open to being legally reproduced.

All of these issues may seem boring. The pursuit of them may seem expensive and unnecessary; nothing could be further from the truth. Building a documentary chain of ownership will be one of the most important tasks an entrepreneur undertakes.