Starting a new business is very exciting. But all businesses, of whatever size and in whatever sector, need to make sure they don’t forget to keep their intangible assets – the so-called crown jewels of a company – safe.
It is, after all, your ideas that attracted customers to you in the first place and makes them want to keep coming back. Protecting these assets adds value to your company, and if someone steals these, your market share can vanish very quickly. Intangible assets can be valued in monetary terms and knowing their worth can help you understand their true value to your business.
So why do we recommend developing a brilliant IP strategy to protect your assets? A comprehensive IP strategy affects just about every aspect of day-to-day business.
If you are a start-up company, you are going to start to build value in your brand from day one. So check out your proposed trading name well before you launch. This means concurrently considering registrations at Companies House, Trade Mark and domain name registries. Make sure no-one else owns the domain name or Trade Mark for your chosen brand or company name. Otherwise you could be in a battle over the ownership of your own brand and even sued for infringing an existing trade mark. Make sure you register your Trade Mark in all the geographical areas that are going to be important.
Companies can do some of this work themselves by checking the UK Trade Mark Registry at www.ipo.gov.uk, where you can see if your name, or a similar one, has been registered in the UK. It is also important to own the web domain name for your company and ideally also additional domains for similar words or abbreviations. New business owners should register their Trade Mark and domain names concurrently these as soon as they can. Registering is not expensive and will avoid getting into the problems cited, in a previous newsletter. This was an example of an organisation called Never Give Up Limited who made a living from registering company names and then trying to sell them back to companies who had been using the name without registering it for a large sum of money, causing much distress to company owners in the process.
Make sure you register all relevant trademarks. You may think you have done so but have you checked? Remember that trademarks are more than the company name – they can include words, logos, sounds, colours, gestures, brand names and slogans – in fact, any distinctive feature which can be represented graphically and which can distinguish the goods or services of one business from those of another. They can even consist of the shape of goods or their packaging! Registration of such marks can be indefinite as long as the renewal fees are paid.
Is your business innovative with technology? Obtaining patents for innovative developments and your inventions gives you rights to stop others from making, selling, licensing, distributing or otherwise profiting from your invention for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of that invention.
It is also important to know if someone else has also made a disclosure connected with your invention which would prevent it from being claimed as novel. Before starting your patent application, you should undertake a global patent search. It can be quite complex to submit a patent that stands a good chance of being granted, and novelty is only one aspect that needs to be considered. Coller IP can help with this process.
Companies should not forget the important role that registered designs, database rights, copyright and trade secrets can also play in protecting intangible assets. Having an understanding of the intangible assets that are and will be important to your company from day 1 is an important first step in protecting these assets. This is the first step in developing an IP Strategy.