How Can You Protect Your Agency’s Intellectual Property?

• Agencies generate a lot of intellectual property…
• …but why should you protect it, and how?
• We’ll be talking to Shireen Smith to find out what you can do.

Whether it’s your brand name, software or even a new creation, agencies create a LOT of intellectual property.

And if you don’t protect it, you could be leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable.

“People assume that the things that emanate from them, belong to them, but when you’re out in the world, unless you take the right actions, you’re not going to have protectable IP. The creation and protection of intellectual property go hand-in-hand,” says Shireen Smith, solicitor and founder of Azrights.

Take your agency’s name, for instance.

“Say you haven’t protected your name with a trademark. If someone else then begins using that name, you’ve got litigation and a dispute on your hands trying to prove you used it first,” says Shireen. “Whereas if you’ve taken the simple action of registering it, you’re able to point to it and say it’s yours, and the law is on your side.”

We’ll be talking all things IP with Shireen, including:

• Having a proper strategy. “You need to think about intellectual property before you create it, if you can, or you’re not necessarily going to have protectable IP that is valuable to you. It’s important to have an IP strategy before you have designs created or send your ideas to software developers – or it could be too late.”

• Protecting yourself to avoid future trouble. “You must take the appropriate steps to stop people copying or exploiting your IP. For example, most people don’t realise that your name is the most important asset you have in a business – everything you do is to get name recognition.”

Come along and discover what you need to do to protect your intellectual property – you might not have realised how important this really is.