John Buchaca

You protect physical property with security systems and watchdogs, you protect your intellectual property with a patent, copyright, or trademark. To use these safeguards, you need to know the steps involved in the patent process, the basics of copyright protection, and how to identify your design, idea, or other creative work legally.

A patent is the most expensive and complex type of IP (intellectual property) right. Decide whether you can protect your IP with a copyright, trademark, or service mark, or by keeping it under wraps as a trade secret before you go through the patent process. If you and your IP professional decide that a patent is the way to go, and you have the time and money to see the process through to the conclusion, here’s the patent process in a nutshell: Make sure the invention is really yours and doesn’t belong to your boss, your spouse, or your business partner.

The world of patents, copyrights, and trademarks includes trade secrets. Trade secrets can take many forms, such as your customer and supplier list, your next marketing campaign, a particular process or formula, or your finances. How can you protect them? By using the tips in the following list: Have all employees, contractors, consultants, advisors, and suppliers sign a confidentiality agreement.

A copyright protects an Original Work of Authorship (OWA) — think short story, computer program, or song lyrics, for example — which must have tangible form, be a result of significant mental activity, have no inherent technical function, and be the author’s original creation. Here’s the skinny on copyrights: As soon as you create an OWA, you automatically have a copyright, which prevents others from copying, publishing, or performing your work.

If you’re developing work or product that you want to get a patent on, register as the copyright holder of, or trademark, you need to be able to distinguish the fruit of your labors from the work of other people. The three types of commercial identifiers that distinguish your product, service, or company from others are: Product identifiers, commonly known as brands, or trademarks, which distinguish your product from others.

The world of patents, copyrights, and trademarks has its share of acronyms, just like any other field. Although when you see IP, you may think “Internet protocol,” in the intellectual property realm, IP stands for, well, intellectual property. The following table lists some of the more commonly used acronyms