When business people think about of protecting their ideas first they think about a patent. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent is a grant of “monopoly for a limited period of time on the use and development of an invention”. To obtain a patent it is necessary to file an application with an explanation why the invention is original, with detailed description of the invention and its aspects, with all drawings, statements and filing fee. But besides this technical issue there are so many things for business people to consider.

Who will provide with all the information that business will need to develop every idea to it logical conclusion including the ways in which ideas can be made, manufactured and marketed? How to protect an idea in such way, so that, no one can make a substantial improvement on it and steal the basic concept and design? How to use all the laws, methods and techniques that are available to all creative people to establish legal protection of an idea under the “First to Invent” provision of U.S. patent law. What about a special advertising copy that will communicate ideas to the right executives at the right companies? Finally, how to find and identify an exact market?

I recently ran across a non-profit which provides all these services to independent inventors comparing patent attorney, invention marketing firms and themselves. The noticeable fact that 90% of services provided is a marketing effort. In my opinion it is a huge help and I bet that’s what independent inventors need.

So here is the deal. To get a help in protection and marketing of inventions watch this informational video of the founder of the Inventor’s Assistance League (IAL), Ted De Boer, who tells about his organization that he started in the 60’s. IAL teaches inventors about a technique known as “pre-patent protection” so an inventor can discuss an idea to determine if it has market value. Thereby saving the expense of a patent until the time is right.

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.