Intellectual property is an extremely valuable asset for any company. It's quite possibly the most important, especially in today’s current highly integrated economy.

Intellectual property protects more than ideas, concepts, and products. It protects genuine business assets that guarantee your business is active and an important player in the industry. It's integral to the products and services your business sells and guarantees long-term viability and future growth.

What is intellectual property? There are 4 types of intellectual property:

1. Trademarks – they are anything related to design, symbols, and words which represent a product or service provided by a company. People immediately identify a brand with its trademark. Good examples include Apple, Coca-Cola and McDonald's.

2. Patents – this type of intellectual property excludes others from making the exact product that you patented. Once the patent expires, other competitors and companies can manufacture the product.

3. Trade secrets – they can be recipes, technical components or other abstract definitions for certain elements required to manufacture a product. A good example is KFC’s recipe for fried chicken.

4. Copyrights – they protect any type of artwork – music, film, literature and printed work. They protect artists from potential infringements and illegal duplication.

Why Is It Important To Protect Your Intellectual Property?

Keeping Your Ideas

Your company is based on a special product which you must protect at all costs. You have a great product or service, and there will be competitors who will want a piece of the pie. If they succeed, your market share may drop and your company may suffer. Depending on the type of property, you can either use trademarks, patents, trade secrets or copyrights to protect your intellectual property. IP protection works for all businesses and organizations, regardless of their size or industry. Virtually all companies use this type of protection to protect their ideas, and will often go to court to defend them from potential infringements.

Protect Business Growth

The protection of intellectual property is very important if you have a small business. Small companies usually focus on just a few products which have to be groundbreaking in order to be successful on the market. Without protection, the uniqueness of a certain product is impossible to guarantee and competitors will try to copy it. This leads to slow growth, loss of revenue and clients and ultimately, bankruptcy. Your business simply can't grow if the products are not protected. Losing market share early in your business life will prove disastrous in the long term and you will likely not recover, especially without legal protection. What's more, it's your responsibility to check whether your intellectual property was infringed and how. No one else will routinely check this aspect, so you will have to be protected at all times.

Prepare For A Strong Offense

A strong offensive force is the best defense money can buy. It's also the best deterrence in case something bad happens. Whenever a product is amazingly popular, it's more likely that there will be numerous counterfeiters trying to mimic or imitate the product. This is disastrous both in the short and the long term for any business who focuses on innovation. The counterfeiters will capitalize on your research and design work, damaging your business immensely. What's more, counterfeiting is not only disastrous for your company, it can be dangerous for consumers and clients, depending on the industry. If you have a good intellectual property protection plan in place, you'll send out the right message – you mean business and your product is not an easy target. It's a very important aspect of doing business, especially when the product is easy to replicate and the competition is tough.

Giving You A Leg Up In The Industry

The protection of intellectual property puts you at a significant advantage over your competition. Protecting your ideas and products will guarantee that your business can capitalize on them in the future, even if they are not successful. Whenever a competitor wants to copy or recreate a product, you will receive certain financial benefits. The same goes for trade secrets – protecting a recipe or a formula can give you the edge you may need to outperform your competition. The research done to create the product is protected and no one will be able to copy it.

Other advantages of intellectual property protection

* You Can License Or Sell The Intellectual Property – This will give you an important revenue stream which may be critical for future development and research; a lot of companies often approach this business model – they research products or services and then sell and license to other manufacturers

* Form An Essential Part Of Your Branding Or Marketing – You should protect everything related to how your brand is seen on the market – your ads, your presentations, your workshops, your technical manuals, conferences, and any other promotional material; every item or element that interacts with the public creates a brand image and you should protect it

* You Can Use It As Security For Loans And Other Financial Benefits – Important intellectual property assets can often be used as security for loans and other types of investments. Banks and potential investors, venture capitalists or potential buyers will ask you how you handle the intellectual property issue. If you have full protection, your business will be considered more professional, trustworthy and, more importantly, valuable. This means that you'll be able to receive larger loans, get a larger credit line and strike a better deal with investors. What's more, if you have excellent intellectual property protection, you will be able to attract better investors, with more resources and connections, boosting your business even more.

You'd be surprised to learn how many aspects of your company can be protected as intellectual property. Things like your company's name, product lines, logos, designs, works of creative, artistic and intellectual effort, inventions, devices, designs and virtually anything that can distinguish your business can be considered a type of protection of intellectual property. If you can legally protect these intellectual property elements, your business will grow faster, be more profitable and your customers will see you as an important player in the industry.