Business Point

Effective Intellectual Property (IP) management has a vital role in commerce. Your intellectual property sets you apart from your competitors, gives you a marketing edge, and can be as valuable to your business as any piece of real estate. Therefore safeguarding it is critical – it may make or break your business future.

A registered design can be a valuable commercial asset. If you own a registered design you can use it to your competitive advantage and importantly, take steps to enforce your design rights. Once your registered design is examined and certified, you may sue for infringement if another person uses your registered design without your permission.

You must take formal steps to register your IP to obtain legal rights of ownership. This gives you legal recognition of your creative effort, and the rights to exploit those assets –they are then yours to sell, licence, bequeath – all to your business advantage.

You must be diligent in safeguarding and maintaining privacy, communicating your legal rights and, if necessary, defending your rights through legal action. Legal protection will help preserve your intellectual investment and ensure that only you can turn your ideas into a commercial reality.

The real value of IP is the way it can be integrated as part of your business strategies -marketing, capital raising, research and development or business development. A clever business will:

• Keep designs and trade developments a secret until appropriate registration is in place
• Use IP to market itself, its products and services
• Combine various strategies that maximise protection and the potential of the business.

For further details, go to IP Australia

Need expert advice? View details of our Visiting Patent & Trade Mark Attorney Program.