6 Ways to Protect Your Business AssetsPosted by Sally McDonald on October 3rd, 2019 In an era of constant technology advances and changes, protecting business assets have become the forefront of needs for all entrepreneurs. Intellectual property is a vital asset that adds value through brand identity and consumer recognition. It is what often makes a business stand out from their competitors. Assets such as business secrets, creative processes and inventions can become exposed to the public and it can be incredibly difficult to recover and keep the business from growing. Thus, protecting business assets should be every entrepreneur’s forefront goal. Below, we explore 7 ways to protect your business assets.
As the two most common methods of protecting business assets, it’s no surprise that trademarking and patents are used by many entrepreneurs to protect their business. Trademarks are beneficial in protecting a business’s brand and logo and ensure that no other businesses are able to copy or steal your business’s brand identity. Patents are a government-granted exclusive license to make, use or sell an invention for a limited period. Here, if your business has an exclusive invention, it may be a good idea to obtain a patent to protect it. Both trademarks and patents are great ways to protect business assets.
Another beneficial way to ensure that your idea won’t get stolen is to use confidentiality agreements with your employees and anybody else working with your business. With growth of a business often comes a need to hire more employees. However, with a greater number of employees risks the possibility of the exposure of trade secrets and processes. Thus, confidentiality agreements ensure that anybody working with your business is unable to speak about any business secrets or projects they may be working on with third parties. This not only protects your business assets from getting stolen but also ensures that you can trust the people you work with.
One of the best ways for entrepreneurs to protect their business assets is to engage the services of a business lawyer. With implementations of protective mechanisms such as trademarks, patents, copyrights infringements and other protective resources, the knowledge and expertise of a business lawyer ensures that these mechanisms are implemented correctly. Further, a business lawyer is able to provide expert knowledge and advice regarding business decisions and strategies, aiding the growth of businesses whilst simultaneously ensuring protection. Consider engaging the services of business lawyer at LegalVision to ensure that your business assets are protected.
As technology continues to advance, it’s impact on the business industry continues to grow. More and more businesses are turning to technology to store their business assets or their business assets are of a technological state. Thus, it is important to monitor your business’s online content and implement protective technological mechanisms to ensure that your online business assets are protected. Copyright automatically protects any web content displayed on your business’s website. Thus, businesses may consider engaging the services of a copyright lawyer, to ensure that copyright is warranted appropriately for any online assets.
There are some businesses whose assets involve design elements. In cases like these, it may be important to warrant a design restriction. A design registration protects the aesthetics of a product and provides exclusive right to businesses to commercialise the product for a particular period before allowing the public to create and/or sell similar products. As a business whose biggest assets involves design, consider implementing a design registration to ensure that your business’s designs are protected.
It is important to ensure that every business enters into, includes an IP clause. Contractual relationships are inevitable in business and often, third parties may receive confidential information to create IP for your business. It is essential to state in all contracts who owns the IP created. This is particularly important for businesses involved in technology, such as app and coding developers. By providing IP clauses in contracts, it ensures that all business work created are of the property of your business and ensures that no third parties are able to steal your business assets. One of the biggest takeaways from being an entrepreneur is the importance of protecting business assets. Without the protection of the assets that make your business unique, growth of your business becomes difficult to achieve and this lack of protection provides opportunities for competitors to steal your business’s assets. Thus, protecting business assets should be a top priority for all entrepreneurs. Like it? Share it! |