Your new business produces images and one-of-a-kind articles that define just what your business is. You may worry about finding out that someone has deliberately or accidentally stolen your intellectual property.
“Intellectual property” may be anything intangible, such as images, words and music. Much of what you and your small team of writers produces is published to the internet.
The main components of intellectual property
Intellectual property may make up three categories. These include trade secrets, such as recipes. If someone steals your unique recipes, this may eventually put you out of business.
The second component is trademark. This covers designs, logos or even words.
The third area of intellectual property is copyright, which protects music, literary and other artistic works.
Why protecting what you created is so important
You and your employees created your company’s intellectual property. If enough bad actors or people who are unaware of copyright law, take what you created, this diminishes the effect of the works you and your employees produce.
To use an example, if you write about the effects of mental illness on teens because this topic area may be your specialty, you need to make sure it is protected.
What copyright protects
This law protects “original works of authorship.” The works may be novels, music, literary writing, song lyrics, movies, architecture and even computer software. Imagine what would happen to the company whose revolutionary software was stolen. That company would quickly go out of business.
If one of your writers has an idea for an e-book, copyright protects how that idea was expressed.
Because your business writes articles and e-books, you need to protect them and your business. Learning how copyright covers your business’ output may help protect it.
