When should you protect your Intellectual Property?

Copyright, trademarks, designs (and models), patents, software and databases are all intangible assets generated by economic activity and conferring rights to their owners.

The question remains: when is the best time to take the necessary steps to develop, protect them and to proceed with the registration formalities (should the latter be legally necessary)?

The answer is simple: as soon as possible.

Indeed, regarding intellectual property rights requiring a registration to be enforced against third parties, including your competitors or counterfeiters, it is the date of registration (or filing) that generally enable you with the necessary rights to initiate such proceedings. It is therefore key to act quickly.

This is the case for patents in order to ensure the anteriority of the invention. An identical conclusion can be reached with respect to designs and models.

The same applies to trademarks to guarantee the anteriority of your trademark over any other similar trademark (or unregistered sign) that may create a likelihood of confusion in the eyes of the public.

It is also paramount to make sure, as soon as possible, that your project (either patent, trademark, design…) is available for registration, otherwise you may be either dragged or compelled into a costly (and time-consuming) rebranding operation, precisely when you are trying to make yourself known to the market.

As far as copyright, software and databases are concerned, although there are no registration formalities, taking an interest in these assets from the start will allow you to ensure a possible time-stamping of the elements likely to be protected.

It will also be possible to structure the project in such a way to maximize the scope of the protection provided by your intellectual property.

Generally speaking, a company or an entrepreneur leading a development team will have every interest in ensuring that the contracts he/she concludes with his/her subcontractors or team members are aimed at the transfer of intellectual property rights related to the project, in order to centralize them and better value, protect or, simply, acquire them.

This will also make it possible to identify the elements more susceptible to be protected by a trade secret and to secure the necessary actions (and contracts) to do so.

Such steps should be taken and included at the beginning of any (an every) project, in the same way as a business plan or a market study.

Finally, correctly identified intellectual property rights can be used for accounting valuation and can be adequately taken into account for tax purposes.