The intellectual property of your business could be considered as anything that has been creatively developed by you or those working for you. It could be such things as blog posts, branding, software that you have written or anything that identifies you as an individual company. Protecting your intellectual property is essential if you want to prevent others from cashing in on the hard work that you have put in. There are also plenty of other reasons why you should do so too, we’ll take a look at the benefits of intellectual property protection in this article.
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Enhance the market value of your business
Imagine that you have created a fantastic piece of software. It’s easy to replicate, though and once others see it in action they have decided that they want a go at selling what you have created. Even though you are the creator your original piece of software isn’t worth that much because others are cashing in on what you have created. If you protect it, however, nobody can copy and your software instantly becomes more valuable. Companies that embrace Intellectual Property Monetization in the digital age double their return on intellectual property investments, year-over-year. There is plenty of information about how protecting intellectual property can increase the value of a business online.
Turn ideas into profit-making assets
Intellectual property rights allow you to patent ideas that are gathering pace within your business. This can give you the time and space you need to fully develop them and create a product or service that will make you profit. In this case, the protection you would need to apply for would be a copyright because it would be protecting creative work. Read up on the differences between trademarks and copyright online.
Market your business’ products and services
A trademark can help you protect any branding that you create, helping you to distinguish yourself from others offering similar products or services to you. Good branding helps you to effectively market and demonstrate to your customers why they should choose you, protecting it helps you stay on top of the game. We have more low budget marketing ideas on our blog, why not have a read through them and see if there is anything more that you can do?
Access or raise finance for your business
Once you have protected your legal property you instantly become more lucrative to investors. They understand that you have something proprietary, which thanks to protection cannot be replicated. If they like your product or service, with protection in place they will struggle to find a reason not to invest.
Enhance export opportunities for your business
Intellectual property protection can be instigated worldwide. This means that if successful, nobody around the world can copy what you have protected, you will be the only business offering your product or service. This is great for enhancing your export opportunities because you are the only one producing something that others around the world want. It means that you can target markets across the world without worrying about someone from within those markets undercutting you because they don’t have export costs.
