A guide to owning your Intellectual property

Intellectual property can be described as the rights to ownership of intangible creations of human intellect. It covers patents for inventions, copyright, and ancillary rights. Which, in simple terms, means creations of your mind.

What’s going on?

For technology vendors and start-ups, intellectual property drives the business. With almost 90% of start-ups failing, getting ahead wherever possible is essential. Protecting your IP can reap rewards, potentially making your start-up look more attractive to investors.

Don’t just take our word for it! Forbes have found that, when obtaining VC funding and competing against key players, protecting IP is crucial to success and can catapult companies to global recognition.

Often start-ups prioritise product development, raising capital and attracting talent. With all these areas of focus, intellectual property can feel distracting, expensive or contrary to the goals of getting a product to market before a competitor does. 

With the increase in remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic, things can arguably enter a grey area of IP ownership. With less monitoring, there is a heightened focus on the increased prevalence of employer IP ownership, which is predicted to generate more disputes in employer and employee ownership.

Did you know?

Growing rapidly can challenge the integrity of a company's intellectual property, if not managed properly. It is recognised that start-ups often end up forfeiting IP rights due to neglecting the protection of their work. Expanding internationally and moving overseas has become imperative for organisations to open new revenue opportunities for those who are up against market share limitations in their home country.

Implementing a global IP protection strategy reaps in rewards for early stage start-ups. A company's commercial value is enhanced, along with their competitive advantage and attractiveness to investors. 

Contractors vs Full Time Employees (FTEs)

Often companies may utilise contractors when entering new countries where they are lacking a local presence or subsidiary. Although this seems like the best option, contractors pose many risks as they have more rights compared to Full-Time-Employees when disputing IP ownership.

What actually is the difference?

Full-Time-Employees (FTE) require a salary, benefits, and a detailed training process to ensure the employee and company goals are aligned. Plus, they exclusively work for your organisation, so no need to worry about your trade secrets being exposed.

Unlike contractors. Although they may open up access to top-tier talent, they cause a huge dilemma for many organisations, especially SMEs, by increasing the risk of IP being compromised.

Alongside this, misclassifying a worker can have major consequences, such as legal disputes, penalties and fines. These monetary and legal repercussions can jeopardise an organisation's reputation, as well as more broadly resulting in loss of revenue for governments.

An Employer of Record solution can provide an airtight IP solution by providing a FTE contract to international hires, allowing a company to tap into new markets and access offshore talent compliantly. 

There is potential risk to:

To begin, let’s dive into the risks around Copyright. This will be familiar to you and covers logos, written copy, web design, photographs, videos, etc. Copyright ownership varies depending on the type of employee. With FTEs, the copyright belongs to the employer. With contractors, if there is no contract that clearly states ownership, the contractor who creates the original works will have ownership over the copyright.

Employers - don’t worry, we have you covered. If you still choose to engage contractors, you should implement a ‘work for hire’ agreement as a solution to copyrighting disputes.

Another risk to your IP involves Patents. This refers to protecting a technical invention and essentially means you exclusively control everything including who can make, use or sell your product or process. It is highly recommended that inventors, startups and creatives obtain patent protection, as employers cannot rely on assumptions of ownership.

Are you thinking, “I pay my employees or contractors, surely I own the IP?” This is a common pitfall but unfortunately, offering compensation to freelancers does not always ensure or vest in ownership of an invention for the company. However, most industrial design legislation recognises that valuable exchanges, such as a salary, imply ownership. Therefore, as an employer, you are protected by having FTEs.

Last but not least, let’s talk about Trademarks, which are easily recognised as company or product names, symbols, words, sounds or shapes. The purpose of trademarks is chiefly to differentiate organisations in the market and avoid repetition.

Organisations with no registered trademark run the risk of damaging their brand reputation by not protecting their products or services against brand impersonators. For start-ups with global ambitions, protecting trademarks at inception will avoid any future trademark infringement cases. It should be a vital part of your business strategy.

Protecting your IP is fundamental to guarding your brand, products, or services, and choosing the right people is critical to safeguarding the success of your business. Whether you need help finding talent or payrolling your perfect FTE, or simply some advice on protecting your IP when expanding into new territories, reach out to our fantastic team to see how they can help.