Why Intellectual Property is important for startups?

In the midst of a century where innovation spurs fast and idea flawlessly come out from different entrepreneurs with an inspiration to solve a particular problem faced by the community or nation intellectual property is often not the priority.  The word Intellectual Property has this far become a household within the innovation spectrum and to some it’s a very expensive to fathom. When talking about intellectual property normally, it involves the idea or concept, product, logos, symbols associated with brand and the process to doing the product or idea. Henceforth, intellectual property is of value to the owner and has commercial benefits with it.

With the crop of now inventors where information is vastly open to many its essential to always check if the IP (Intellectual Property) is similar to someone else. This clarifies the need for startup to consider IP implications before the implementation of their idea. A startup should therefore check or consult with any offices of Intellectual Property Rights to see if anyone has ever invented the idea before or the similarities of the product or idea patented.  Normally, there could be others around globe who are working on a similar idea. Even though, international IP protection could be expensive for a startup it should thereby protect its IP locally or regionally first while still seek funding. By not complying with this a startup may be affected to scale up. 

Importance of Intellectual Property

IP sometimes is a unique selling proposition of the product or service as startup is offering as it helps create a sustainable income for the company. In conjunction, when you have IP you not only protecting your novelty but also position yourself to a high weightage by investors as it creates a good value to a startup. This illustrates that IP is one major gateway for startups to succeed and also have a competitive advantage where competition is stiff in market. In particular, a startup stands a better position to succeed if their novelties are protected, also attracts investors around the globe to either buy your inventions with a plan to give a startup royalty.

How can startup protect their products/ideas?

There are however three essential ways a startup can protect its intellectual property through:

• Patents
•  Trademarks
•   Copyrights

Intellectual Property is very valuable and startups should not undermine it in order to avoid a situation where they find out that an idea or product they have developed has been patented. In addition, IP has a better long-term sustainable advantages it can offer to a startup or a company.                                          

Share on Google Plus

About Unknown

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.