Don’t make the number one biggest mistake made by new entrepreneurs!
New entrepreneurs are bound to make lots of mistakes when setting up their first company or coming up with a business idea.
It’s all part of the learning process, and you can normally recover from small mistakes and use them to improve your business in the long run.
However, there’s one major business mistake too many new entrepreneurs make – and it’s the biggest and most damaging one out there: not protecting your intellectual property.
The World Intellectual Property Organization defines intellectual property (IP) as “creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names and images used in commerce.” For a new entrepreneur, your IP could involve key ideas relating to a brand-new product or service you’ve created. It could also be the designs for your logo or business name.
You’re already starting to see how not protecting your IP can be a struggle, so let’s dive deeper into this topic to see what happens when you make this mistake and how to avoid it.
The dangers of neglecting your intellectual property
Not protecting your intellectual property essentially means it’s up for grabs. This is incredibly problematic in a multitude of instances – starting with your general ideas being stolen. As a new entrepreneur, you’ve come up with the idea of a lifetime. It’s something you’re proud of; you spotted a gap in the market and managed to create the perfect business model to fill it.
Your market research was a great success, and the testing phases were remarkably positive. Everything looks amazing – but you haven’t secured the right protection for your idea. Unfortunately, someone else gets wind of it, notices there are no patents or copyright claims, and steals the idea from you.
Because you failed to protect the IP, you technically don’t have a legal leg to stand on. You could try to file a lawsuit, but it would cost a lot of money with no guarantee of success. Suddenly, your big business idea crumbles to the ground and someone else is winning off the back of your great ideas.
This is an extreme example, but other issues relate to individuals or businesses using your brand logo. If you don’t copyright it, then anyone can legally use it – which makes it hard to establish a brand image and can mean they use your logo for nefarious purposes to ruin your reputation.
How to protect your intellectual property
Evidently, you don’t want to make the same mistake as many other new entrepreneurs. Too many people do this because they forget about the legal side of running a business and coming up with ideas.
Whenever you establish something valuable to your business, work with a patent attorney to license it and lock your IP away. This will involve proving that your IP is an original creation, but when the patent comes through, it’s safeguarded behind many legal walls.
Nobody can steal your protected ideas anymore, leaving you with one less thing to worry about!
Again, there are other big mistakes new entrepreneurs make, but neglecting IP protection is clearly the biggest. It’s shockingly common, so be sure you protect all of your assets to avoid a disaster before your business even has a chance to get off the ground.
