People want to know how to protect ideas. Maybe they have a concept for a new business model, or a play, or a series of books. Or something else entirely. Either way, they want to protect ideas important to their business.
Protect ideas using intellectual property.
How To Protect Ideas
This article provides ideas on how business owners can protect ideas that will form part of their business.
- Ideas have little value: An idea, by itself, has low value. Until something is put into a concrete form, there is often little that can be done with it (note that there are situations where the idea itself does have value, so speak to an attorney to understand that better). It can be tempting to jump to protecting an idea when there hasn’t been investment in the plan.
- It’s the expression that matters: Since ideas have little value on their own, the execution of that idea matters. When you deal with something like copyright protection, the law makes a clear distinction between an idea and the expression of an idea. For example, an expression of an idea can get copyright protection, but the idea cannot.
- Ideas can turn into intellectual property: Think of the expression of the idea as intellectual property. Generally, a few flavors of intellectual property exist: copyright, trademark, trade secrets, patents. With most of these flavors of intellectual property, tangible items give rise to intellectual property protection. It’s always essential to have strategies for protecting intellectual property, once it has been created.
- Ideas may be protected in multiple ways: Turning an idea into a business involves many things: getting customers, building a brand, research, and product development, marketing, etc. That means that your business will be composed of many different kinds of intellectual property: trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. As you may have guessed, building a business out of an idea is hard work, and that work requires protection.
To be clear, ideas and conversations about ideas can have value, and they should be protected. Still, the real value in any creative business is the intellectual property that is created from the ideas.
