10-Sep-2007

Protection is an imperative component to exploiting and profiting from your intellectual property. Intellectual property is a label for different legal theories of protection being copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, and rights of publicity.
How you protect intellectual property depends on the type of intellectual property you have. Each form of protection serves a different purpose and it may be that your project is lucky enough to have several different types of intellectual property thus providing maximum amount of protection.
Intellectual property may be protected by obtaining registrations (either state or federal), having the correct contracts in place, and/or litigation.
Courts have ruled that in order to collect royalties from your intellectual property, you must have protectable intellectual property. Therefore, it is important for you to inventory your protectable intellectual property and make sure that all the proper protections are in place.