INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

If you are a start up company you probably think you don’t have many assets. You are wrong.  A new business may lack inventory, cash flow, a store front, and maybe a customer base, but the foundation of a successful start-up company is its intellectual property.

Intellectual property is property that you can’t hold.  It’s ideas, new inventions, innovative concepts, methods and products, brand names, brands, recipes, know-how, novel ways of doing things and producing products, proprietary information, customer lists, prospects for new business.  A business’ value lies in its ability to create and protect intellectual property, which can be bought, sold and traded just like any other asset.  When raising capital, it if often the lack of intellectual property that prevents a company from being funded.  Who would pay for something that they are free to copy?

We will create and protect your company’s most valuable asset, its intellectual property, using trade secrets laws, copyrights, patents, trademarks and licensing strategy.  And, we usually do it for a flat fee.

YOUR QUESTIONS…

1.    Do I have IP?

2.    Can I protect my invention?

3.    How do I protect my app now that patents aren’t available for software?

4.    Who owns my IP?

5.    Can I get the url for my registered trademark?

6.    What’s the point of trademarking my name?

7.    Can I file a patent application before I have a working model?

8.    Provisional or utility patent?

9.    How do I license my idea, product, or method?

10.  Once of my business partners left and is using our customer list to generate new clients.  Can I go after him?

OUR ANSWERS…

CONSULTATION…We offer 90-minute consultations for $350. During that time, we can learn more about your business model, products, ideas, branding, and existing intellectual property, and develop a comprehensive strategy to build a valuable and iron clad intellectual property portfolio that will increase your company’s marketability.  No further obligations unless you hire us.

TRADEMARKS…If you have an expression, symbol, color, sound, or words that identifyproducts or services of a particular source from those of others, you have a trademark.

PATENTS…If you have a new, non-obvious, and patentable method, plant, article of manufacture, product, chemical, non-functional design, business method, or composition of matter you may be able to prevent others from making, using, and selling them for 14-20 years.

TRADE SECRETS…If your product, method, article of manufacture, chemical, novel or proprietary information can’t be reverse engineered, you may want to gain a perpetual right to exclude others.  Trade secrets do not expire so long as the secret is maintained according to applicable state and federal statutes.

COPYRIGHTS…If you have an original artistic expression that is fixed in a medium like a digital recording, cd, book, motion picture, photograph, computer software, choreography, or painting, you may qualify for copyright protection of your work.

LICENSING…If you have intellectual property and you want to capitalize on it, you may want to license its use to others in lieu of selling the totality of your rights.  When licensing your work, it’s important to understand that you can only license what you own.  Once a licensee understands that you have no ownership rights, they will use your property without compensating you.  Let us help with that.