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4 Ways to Protect Your Intellectual Property as a Software Company

November 3, 2016 By Zak Mustapha 9 Comments

You are a small business owner, nowhere near the level of Apple or Google. So you don’t believe your brand requires a tremendous amount of protection. But your thoughts could never be more wrong.

4 Ways to Protect Your Intellectual Property as Software Company

The logo that you created, the brand that you are developing, the concepts and software that you are producing—they all have value that is worth more than you think.

You never know when you could be in the position to sign a contract or make a deal that transitions your business into a multi-million dollar company. And when this opportunity happens, your business and its intellectual assets will receive a lot more attention.

That is why it is important from the very beginning to have your intellectual property well-protected so that it can never be stolen from you.

You don’t want to be shocked to find out that someone is copying the entire operations of your company. And you would be absolutely powerless to do anything about them profiting from what you have worked so hard to build, due to lacking intellectual property protection.

Following are four ways that you can guard against others stealing your intellectual property from your business.

Table of Contents

    • 1. Register your software copyright with the U.S. copyright office
    • 2. Protect against employees stealing your intellectual property
    • 3. Avoid source code licenses
    • 4. Keep trade secrets secret
  • Conclusion
      • Zak Mustapha
      • Latest posts by Zak Mustapha (see all)

1. Register your software copyright with the U.S. copyright office

Copyrights are given the second you write something. This protection is supposed to deny anybody the ability to copy, distribute, or display your work without your permission.

If you rely on this copyright, however, you could face problems when someone infringes on it, forcing you to take action.

You can’t actually file a lawsuit against the perpetrator without having your copyright registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Registering your copyright with the copyright office provides you with better protection in the event you have to go to court.

When you publish computer software, it is especially important for your company to copyright its material as soon as possible. Federal lawsuits can be very expensive. And the later you register your software copyright, the harder it might be for you to receive the proper reimbursement for the estimated damages.

The cost of registering a copyright is only $45 per work, so don’t skip out on getting this necessary protection.

2. Protect against employees stealing your intellectual property

When employees work on developing software within your company, they have tremendous access to your material. Someone can later use this access against your company. This situation might happen if any of your employees were to become dissatisfied and want to damage your business.

That is why it is important to take the necessary steps to protect yourself from any of your employees seeking to exploit the inside knowledge they have.

There are a couple of ways you can safeguard your company.

  • Employee Agreements: These state that your company owns all work that your employees do.
  • Non-Compete Agreements: Employees cannot create businesses similar to yours while your company employs them, nor for a certain timeframe after their departure from your company.
  • Confidentiality and Trade Secrets Agreements: These protect against the disclosure of confidential information that gives too much insight into the operations of your business.

These are just a few ways to protect your intellectual property from disgruntled employees. But even with such measures in place, people will still try to get away with stealing your valuable information.

When this theft occurs, you can protect your intellectual property by taking the necessary precautions to trace all of your steps, verifying your ownership of the copyrighted software. You can do so by establishing a neutral dated audit trail, which stands up very well in court.

3. Avoid source code licenses

Open source code licenses give permission to anybody to use, modify, and share your licensed software.

With so many people having access to your intellectual property, you aren’t in the position to govern every single person’s actions.

Noncompliance issues and licensing issues are common problems that come with using open source code licenses. These are headaches that you want to avoid.

Use a software escrow instead. Software escrow helps protect all parties involved by having a 3rd party escrow agent hold the software’s essential information.

4. Keep trade secrets secret

Simply put, your company must implement the most effective measures to keep your trade secrets safe from exposure.

Trade secrets can be at risk if someone intentionally exposes them to the public. The risk is even greater if you didn’t take steps to keep those trade secrets safe.

The best way to keep your secrets safe is through confidentiality agreements and nondisclosure agreements.

Coca-Cola is a classic example of a company tightly guarding its trade secrets. You don’t have to go to the same extreme measures as Coca-Cola. But be sure to keep your valuable information well-protected.

Conclusion

It is absolutely important to take care of the protection of your company’s intellectual property immediately.

These 4 tips are just a few measures your company can take to ensure others cannot easily steal from you.

Success in business is all about competitive advantage. Don’t let the competitive advantage provided by your intellectual property go unprotected.

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Zak Mustapha

Zak Mustapha is a High-Ticket Closer who helps influencers, coaches and marketers with packages over $2.5K multiply their sales and achieve exponential growth. You can find out more on how he helps them do all thatwithout them paying anything from their pocket.
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Filed Under: Careers, Edu, Gov't, Legal Tagged With: copyright, copyright infringement, intellectual assets, patent, trademark

Comments

  1. Edwin Chang says

    April 11, 2020 at 7:36 am

    Great read and especially for new beginners who don’t know the value of their IP Assets.

    Have written on the same topic but more focused on Startups. Looking to share it.
    Article: https://abounaja.com/blogs/7-reasons-why-trademarks-are-important/

    It’s important for all startups to focus on managing their IP as they are most vulnerable to having their assets being infringed.

    Cheers
    Edwin Chang would love you to read ..UAE Reduces IP Services Fees by 25 PercentMy Profile

    Reply
  2. smithdon000000 says

    December 15, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    nice one! I think this is an important knowledge for the intellectual property owners who want to grow their business. Your tips are superb and will definitely helpful for such people. Thanks for sharing these amazing tips.

    Reply
  3. Arpan AA says

    November 7, 2016 at 5:43 am

    I learned it from one of my friend about keeping secrets in business.
    That guy reavealed all his secrets in office and in 6 months he found 6 new strong competitor emerged in market offering same services for cheaper prices.
    Arpan AA would love you to read ..Ipage Cyber Monday / Black Friday 2016 Web hosting Sale discount CouponsMy Profile

    Reply
  4. Mark says

    November 6, 2016 at 7:41 am

    This are four excellent tips Zak!

    And thanks for pointing out, even small companies definitely
    need to be mindful of taking specific measures, to protect any
    and all Intellectual Property rights!

    And I particularly like tip # two!Great job!Thanks!
    Mark would love you to read ..Being An Entrepreneur: Means Leveraging Your Current Skills For Maximum Profits!Part ThreeMy Profile

    Reply
  5. Jeff says

    November 5, 2016 at 6:09 pm

    I just want to tell you thank you for sharing this information. I am aware of the problem, and now after reading I appreciate a lot this article.

    Reply
  6. John Gomez says

    November 4, 2016 at 2:39 pm

    My que is an off topic. Can you tell me which social plugin you have used? I liked it. I wanna add this to my site. Is it peid or free? I wanna learn more about this. can you help me? Please.

    Reply
  7. Ravi Chahar says

    November 4, 2016 at 7:03 am

    Hey Zak,

    Nowadays, the number of stealing cases have increased. For a software company, it’s necessary to submit their product to the copyright office.
    Take every step you can. No company would want to share their software with any other.
    Thanks for sharing with us.

    ~Ravi
    Ravi Chahar would love you to read ..51 Blog Post Ideas To Generate A Smoking Hot Segment of The Content.My Profile

    Reply
  8. Lewis says

    November 4, 2016 at 4:08 am

    Really helpful information for all companies to stay in this competitive business market. Thanks for sharing this tips.

    Reply
  9. Dhaval Parmar says

    November 4, 2016 at 3:29 am

    absolutely true It is important to take care of the protection of your company’s intellectual property immediately.

    These 4 tips are really informative and helpful for us.

    Reply

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