Protecting Your Intellectual Property

I have been prompted to write this article because I have had an issue recently regarding my T-shirt shop I operate on Zazzle.com called MotherThumper’s General Store. (Check it out!) I recently had a design I drew myself and titled with a slogan I thought matched the picture quite well. I even did a trademark search to see if the particular phrase was trademarked. It was not, so I ran with it and posted it for sale at MotherThumper’s General Store. It wasn’t up for two days before I got the command from almighty Zazzle that it had to come down because I infringed on somebody’s (UGA) Intellectual Property rights. I happen to disagree with the decision but it was just easier to change the slogan to something else and move on, rather than get an attorney involved and point out the finer points of intellectual property. (Here is the design with the new phrase, if there are any UGA fans out there.) So, I got thinking…… Surely I can’t be the only person who has questions or issues dealing with Intellectual Property rights.

First off, intellectual property is any product of human intellect that is intangible but has value in the marketplace. The reason it is called “intellectual” is because it is the product of imagination, creativity and inventiveness. Later on in this article, I will give some common examples of intellectual property rights but for now, I want to discuss mistakes people and/or businesses make with intellectual property rights.

Three common mistakes made when addressing intellectual property rights are not completely recognizing the value of them, not using these rights as a part of their overall plan of success and of course, not protecting them properly. Now, it can be perplexing to actually determine what qualifies as intellectual property and whether or not it should be legally protected. There are two primary rules for figuring out if legal protection should be pursued. First, the decision should be made if the intellectual property in question is directly related to a competitive advantage. Basically, a competitive advantage here means that the intellectual property gives you a business advantage over any competitors you may have to compete against.

The second reason to consider if legal protection is needed for intellectual property rights is to determine if it has value in the marketplace. It would be a waste of money and time to invest in legal work to trademark or patent something if it has no real value in the marketplace or the market is too small to really make any difference. However, on other occasions, getting intellectual property rights protection is absolutely essential because if appropriate legal protection is not obtained, the value of the property can be lost.

There are four key forms of intellectual property protection. They are: Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights and Trade Secrets. I will go into each one more in-depth in another article. For now, you should know that intellectual property laws exist to encourage creativity and innovation by allowing people to have exclusive rights to their work they so diligently labored over. On another note, it is completely up to the intellectual property rights owner to use these legal protections and police their own property. The courts will prosecute individuals who violate intellectual property right laws but it is up to the owner of said property to safeguard their intellectual property.

Forms of Intellectual Property

Names, slogans, logos, jingles, advertisements, brochures, pamphlets, customer lists, prospect lists, employee handbooks, written training material and company newsletters, contractual forms, power point slides presenting a companies financial performance, employee pay records, website design, domain names, original computer code, e-mail lists, new and useful inventions and business processes, etc..etc..etc.

- MotherThumper