Is anybody interested to know what friends and co-workers think about real values of the person? Is there a gap between a “real person” and a person that other people get use to see in business relationships?

Coach Rachelle Disbennett-Lee advises that one of the most important activities in growing a business is growing relationships. We all do it, but it takes time, energy and effort to build a network. Through building that network you build relationships with people who know you, trust you and will do business with you. All of us have a network of people we depend on. We might use their services, get referrals from them and ask for assistance when seeking a job. It is vitally important that we build relationships with the people in our network so that we can obtain good tips and advice. If you neglect your network you might find yourself without resources or references when you most need them.

However, other people need to know how they can benefit from you. How to network by becoming more of who you are? In other words, if there is a gap between perception and reality, between you other people see and real you, people won’t understand your ability to be a part of the network.

My personal vision is if people know exactly who you are you will get a certain value in the network. A personal brand is the key for successful networking and here how it works. A personal brand is similar to a business brand and here I absolutely agree with David McNally and Karl Speak, co-authors of my favorite book about personal branding. In business, the rules of brand management focus on strategies and tactics that build strong business relationships, which by their nature, are very special. Many of them used by businesses in managing their brands may be used in managing personal brands with the same success. Obviously, strong personal brand that is clear, complete and valuable to others create successful relationships in networking.

Building a personal brand can be very challenging, however. It is not easy to get to be more of who you are when there are so many different relationships around. It is hard to be the same and to have “one face” with everybody.

A strong personal brand needs to be clearly defined. First of all, it needs to be distinctive, to have a point of view that is to say. Next, it needs to be relevant, so the true value of the brand is connected to something that others think is important. And last, it needs to be consistent, based on the experience and behavior of the brand owner. In other words, when all that you do in your life is distinctive, relevant and consistent, people in your network see and understand your personal brand.

As a conclusion, not all personal brands are acceptable by all people. Everybody has own values and others shouldn’t judge them. That what business people think is right particularly for them is a main thing business people do. They stand for their brand.

There is a lot of work and creativity needed to build a website. There is a big effort needs to be made to manage it successfully day-by-day. If you own a website you know what I am talking about. I insisted in my previous posts that a website is an intellectual property with a great value and it needs to be protected. Moreover, this protection is worthwhile when we make it even before we actually started building a website.

Consider website developing agreement between you and developer. Think about it, there are so many parts of the creation. Who will own the rights? The particular description of the project to be developed, payment provisions, ownership and warranties are integral parts of a website development agreement. Since the developer is being paid to create the website by the client, it doesn’t mean that the client will automatically own all rights. In case there isn’t a written agreement, a client will get ownership of the website, while a developer will have a copyright on his creation. Written agreements can provide two options: absolute ownership by the client of all created digital content; and ownership by developer of his creation, which will be non-exclusively licensed to the client.

Nevertheless, in addition to a digital content’s ownership, there needs to be a determination of the ownership of developer tools like HTML code, Java code, Java applets, search engines, and toolbars for operating websites and moving between pages.

Website credits and links, site hosting, domain name and developer representations, and warranties should be carefully examined. Since a developer can state his name on the website, place a hyperlink on a client’s site to developer site, and inversely from his site to client’s site as an example of his work, client should exercise careful approach in choice of a developer. His name and reputation can be critical for client’s business.

Obviously, the main part of the developing agreement is a confidentiality of provided information. The developer should keep it in secret and express reasonable care to prevent the unauthorized use confidential information. The approach is very simple: level of care should be the same if developer needs to protect his own confidential information. But seems in case of developer-independent contractor it is hard to ensure, because of the developer’s independent status and entrepreneur nature.

The conclusion is, when you have an agreement between you and developer things are clear as to the rights to the owner. After all, you want to know who has royalty rights! If things are complicated it is better to discuss them before the agreement is signed. Undoubtedly, it is worth to consult an appropriate professional to avoid any misunderstanding in the future.

As I said in my previous article, there is a need for intellectual property plan to protect a digital content of the websites, e-mails and other electronic communication. How to prevent an infringement of your rights and a damage of hundreds of thousands of dollars? Every owner of digital content who currently possesses or develops it should consider making particular steps of implementing this plan. It can be, for example, an identification of current or potential users, clients, competitors, employees and level of their access to disclosure and development of digital content.

Who are the final users of digital content? Are they private or corporate users? What kind of agreement protects rights of the owner? What are responsibilities of third parties? What are rights and responsibilities of the employees? These considerations are extremely important and define the company’s success of such protection, which after all, defines the company’s future.

Copyright infringement

Copyright infringement, is the unauthorized copying and distribution, or unauthorized derivative works, which occurs when someone uses your rights without permission.

However, the Copyright Act gives copyright owners a right to sue the infringer in a court rather than prevents infringement itself. Registering work with the Copyright Office is simple technical formality that maximizes copyright protection. Although registration is not required to establish copyright, it is a prerequisite to copyright protection in a court, when a copyright owner files a lawsuit to protect his rights.

Examples of copyright infringement are activities as the direct copying of copyrighted works, creating derivative works without permission, going beyond the restrictions contained in license agreement, impermissible linking, including framing, removing copyright management information, cracking copyright protection measures.

Trade Secret

If some information as formula, pattern, or compilation of information is used in a business and gives to this business certain advantage over competitors who don’t know about it at specific time, this information constitutes a trade secret and should be secured.

It is necessary to avoid disclosure of confidential information in promotional literature, or properly using proprietary secret arrangement of elements in the public domain. Promotional literature gives away a lot, but it shouldn’t give away how the business works. Indeed, it can be a very problematic issue because of the nature of new technology to be exposed for potential consumers but the rivals always aware of new processes and development and take advantage of use of this information.

The biggest enemy of copyright and of trade secret may be a reverse engineering. An aspect of legal copying, within the bounds of fair use reverse engineering, may obtain information that can be put to developing a competitive product. Although reverse engineering may be legal under copyright law, it might be barred by proper licensing which sets up strict rules and provides users with certain limitations. The further discussion highlights the best example of corporate software licensing system of Microsoft.

Implementing an intellectual property plan

Employment agreement is an essential tool of copyright and trade secrecy protection, which should be signed by every employee. Accordingly, copyright and trade secret protection sections, factors determining employee status should be a central part of the document that, after all assigns to the employer the ownership of all works the employee creates within his scope of employment. The rule of work for hire doctrine is quite clear: when an employee creates a work within the scope of employment, the employer owns the copyright. The scope of employment is very crucial to determining copyright ownership. What is the scope of employment of an independent contractor and his rights?

Normally independent contractors are used when there is specialized area which is not a usual business area of an employer. The status of such an employee as independent and the ownership of his creation is defined by the type of employment agreement, his ability to control his work, using his own place and tools, payments, benefits, and tax treatment. That means a hiring company should always require independent contractors to sign an agreement before a project begins in order to assign his copyright ownership to the company. For example, creating a website should be considered as work made for hire and a hiring party will possess the ownership when independent contractor signed an agreement before starting a project.

Moreover, in order to possess ownership on all works made by an employee as work made for hire, the agreement needs to give an employer a right to exercise control over the employee’s duties. However, in the case of an independent contractor, a court may rise question of scope of such control and determine if an employer has an actual right of this control. Therefore, the ownership of created works heavily relies on the answer for this question and any negligent treatment of such agreement may be very costly for employer.

Final point is, look who are the persons developing your digital content. A matter of peculiar interest is a type of the worker (developer). According this determine a type of employment agreement to protect your intellectual property rights. When things are clear there is no place for infringement.