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What are the legal requirements to protect Intellectual Property

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Although a comprehensive analysis of the legal requirements for protecting intellectual property rights is lengthy, a few points need to be made:

In order to get protection under intellectual property laws, it is not enough to be the author or owner of the intellectual property. One must also be proactive and consistent in asserting and protecting those original rights.
The author or owner must clearly appear to value the rights or else they may not be enforced under the law. As an example - if an employee accidentally or carelessly discusses secret intellectual property with unauthorized parties, at least two things have happened: first, the secret has been leaked and someone else has the opportunity to capitalize on it; secondly, the intellectual property may be understood to have been placed in the public domain, which would remove it from legal protection as intellectual property.

Organizations should also realize that while some intellectual property includes secrets, such as recipes, formulas, etc., other kinds of intellectual property are public knowledge, like patented technology offered up to the public in the form of a product or copyrighted writings published as a book. The protection challenges are obviously very different in the two situations. The first relies heavily on confidentiality controls, while the second is more a matter of labeling and enforcement of the copyright, trademark, etc. against those considered to be infringing.

The best ways for an organization to keep intellectual property protected is for them to promote a comprehensive risk environment, achieved through specific and enforced policies, as well as providing awareness training for employees.

Next Page: What are some of the trends in Intellectual Property protection?

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