NFIB

Protecting Your Know-How
09/ 27/ 2005
by Maura Keller

In a knowledgeable economy like ours, intellectual property is essential to success. It’s something that every successful small business--whether they know it or not--builds and accumulates.

The term “intellectual property” covers a broad range of assets, which include patents, copyrights and trademarks. But it also comprises expertise, data and even management practices and operations. It can be the collective knowledge and expertise of a business, or that of individual employees.

In fact, information and know-how are probably the most overlooked and undervalued intellectual property assets. And small businesses often fail to protect their most valuable intellectual capital because they don’t understand that even noncomplex items such as customer lists, product names and anticipated marketing plans are protectable.

Consider Your Name
“When small-business owners start ventures, most spend considerable time and money promoting their businesses’ name in the minds of their customers,” says Scott Rutherford, marketing communication manager at Thomson CompuMark, a trademark and copyright research firm. “Yet many business owners overlook the trademark issues raised by their selection and use of that business name.”

Get a Patent on Products
When it comes to the more tangible aspects of intellectual property, John Osborne, a patent attorney with the intellectual property firm of Morgan and Finnegan headquartered in New York, says that one of the most common mistakes small businesses make is failing to maintain confidentiality of their inventions.

“It is absolutely essential that patent applications be filed before any public disclosure of the invention is made,” Osborne says. “Rights to patent the invention in almost all foreign countries are lost the instant a public disclosure is made.”

An inventor has a one-year grace period to file in the United States, after which all rights are lost. “This is a particularly troublesome area for small businesses because they frequently get to the marketplace before they get to a patent lawyer,” he says.

If managed with diligence and savvy, intellectual property can be a strategic business tool that allows emerging, small businesses to compete successfully against larger, established competitors with more marketing power.

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