COMMON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MISTAKES TO AVOID:

You and your team are bursting with pride in having developed a new technology in a specific area.  Moreover, you have filed the intellectual property applications – for patents or trademarks — to avoid any ownership or legal issues.  Yet beware:  A minor mistake in the claim can result in a lawsuit leading to crippling litigation costs and eventual show-stopping legal liability.   Thus, protecting your company’s intellectual property properly and competently is critical. At Davidpagelaw, an Israel based law firm, you will find a network of international attorneys well-versed in intellectual property law and strategy relating to patents, trademarks, and copyrights, with the knowledge to develop a strategic plan to protect the valuable intellectual property assets efficiently, relatively cheaply, and comprehensively.

Following is the list of most common IP mistakes which you can’t avoid to make, else you risk losing your business:

YOU HAVE NOT REGISTERED YOUR BUSINESS NAME AND TRADEMARK:

Businesses often assume that their unique brand and identity are protected from infringement if they have registered their company’s name and brandnames in one country with that country’s trademark office. But that is not the case. You will have to cover all the bases.  Similarly, you will have to register your business’s web url. The longer you wait to register your business name, brand names, and indeed every constituting element of IP, the higher your chances of losing out in your key markets.

YOU HAVE NOT RESEARCHED YOUR COMPETITION:

Before filing your technology or invention as intellectual property, make sure that you have done sufficient market research about your competition. Competitor analysis is essential to ensure that your claim might not turn into a lawsuit against you. It includes not just sales, marketing strategies or the possibility of the rate of profit but also the intellectual property, such as products, services, goods, brandnames, registered trademarks, goodwill, and concepts they have patented or have under trademark or even copyright protection.  Thorough research – whether into novelty and new inventive step or distinguishing marks — will help you have the freedom to hassle-free launch your invention, while failure to do so might end up in you being the receiving end of willful infringement actions.

YOU HAVE NOT SPECIFIED PATENT CLAIMS:

Before you start mentioning your product or technology to the public, make sure you have registered a patent. Also, make sure the patent claims are at once specific enough and at the same time as broad as possible; otherwise they are liable to be exploited and manipulated by your competitors’ businesses, as competitors find a way to introduce a small tweak into what is otherwise protected IP, thereby working around you.  Reverse engineering is another example of a run-around your valuable IP, and this, too, should be a consideration in your patent strategy and development.

YOU DID NOT GO THROUGH THE LEGAL DOCUMENTS CAREFULLY:

Make sure you read all legal documents binding on your new business, carefully so that you can identify areas that may cause issues in the future.

NO INVENTION AND INVENTOR’S RIGHTS WAIVER:

Not including a invention and inventor’s rights waiver in your employee contract could make your invention or product vulnerable to exploitation by your employees. You may put forth the argument that you own everything your employee creates for your business, by default retaining what are called “shop rights.” But it is in your best interest if you get a proprietary rights and inventions waiver to protect the integrity of your work be it a piece of code, drafts or equation, machine, or technology. Similarly, add copyright to the work clause in your business agreement.

If you’re a first-time entrepreneur who has invented a product/technology or you own a multinational corporation that has devised a breakthrough product to make lives more comfortable and more straightforward, your first action should be to file applications for covering your essential intellectual property rights.

If you are small to medium scale tech companies looking for solution pertaining intellectual property reporting, you can consult David Page Law and its networked team of international attorneys specializing in regulatory affairs of specific domains and providing the required legal counsel at transparent and fixed pricing package, per the client’s need.