Do you know the value of your intellectual property? Many individuals and business owners overlook the importance of their intellectual assets. They put the necessary measures to guard tangible assets but neglect intellectual assets. Unfortunately, these assets could be worth more than the value of anything else you or your business owns.
Unfortunately, there are malicious people and businesses that understand the value of intellectual property. They’ve created profitable businesses around pirated work. They go unscathed since real owners of the work don’t understand the value of their creation or fail to take proactive anti-piracy measures to guard their intellectual property.
Table of Contents
What is intellectual property?
Intellectual property is any intangible asset or license you have acquired to protect your work of art, innovation, or unique business identifier. The popular type of intellectual property includes copyright, patent, trade dress, trademarks, and trade secrets. Intellectual property is valuable because it can be easily monetized to bring recurring income and used to generate a competitive advantage.
Copyrights
A copyright is an intellectual property associated with original creations of the mind, such as works of art, literature, or music. It gives the owner the sole right to reproduce, perform, distribute, showcase in public, record, create derivative works, and sell the copyrighted material. To own copyright means that you came up with an idea and expressed it creatively without plagiarising any other person’s work. Copyright covers a wide variety of works, and these may include novels, books, poems, songs, sheet music, architectural designs, various types of work, software programs, choreography, graphics, and others.
Trademarks
Trademarks are symbols, slogans, sounds, names, designs, and phrases that distinguish or identify your brand, its products, or services from others in your field. A trademark is supposed to be unique and incorporated in commerce to promote or sell your products or service.
Patents
A property right is given to an investor to protect their invention. Patents can be acquired for innovative designs, items such as machines, processes, improvements on existing products or processes, among others. It’s a common acquisition for technology and software designs. Patents can be classified into various categories, including:
- Design patent – it relates to the aesthetic, non-functional features of an item. It may cover the three-dimensional features of an item such as the surface and shape or two-dimensional properties like lines, color, and patterns.
- Plant patent – it’s obtained to safeguard a new version of a plant. For instance, you are a researcher and developed a pest-resistant fruit tree. It’s also lawful to get a design patent for a plant variety that has unique physical features.
- Utility patent – this is a vast category of patent law that covers products that serve practical purposes. Utility patents can be applied for software, pharmaceuticals, vehicle safety systems, and others.
Trade dress
Trade dress is a type of trademark registration that protects the unique appearance and feel of an item or service. It should relate to a source, such as the company. Trade dress may involve the shape of an item or its packaging and deter other companies from coming up with a product that appears confusingly similar to buyers.
Trade Secrets
This is confidential information that forms the basis of how a company works. For instance, it could be a company process or practice unknown to the public that gives it an economic advantage. Trade secrets are mostly obtained through research and development. Companies obtain property rights to trade secrets to protect against unlawful disclosure, implementation, or use without consent.
How To Protect Intellectual Property Through Google Data Scraping
When you obtain a patent, copyright, or trademark certificate for your idea, this doesn’t mean someone else will automatically steer clear. These are crucial anti-piracy measures. However, just like any other asset, you’ll notice that there are many malicious people and businesses that are hellbent on stealing intellectual property. Since you understand its value, you can’t allow that. This calls for active monitoring and protection of your intangible assets.
It’s easy to notice when your property is at risk of infringement when you keep tabs on where it’s posted or sold. One way to make this possible is through Google scraping (here you can read more about it.)
It involves using a SERP scraper to gather real-time data that you can analyze to point out when your work is being copied or shared illegally. Google scraping is an effective anti-piracy measure that enables you to collect enough data to prepare a portfolio. You could use the portfolio in court in case you have to sue anyone perpetrating IP rights infringement.
Conclusion
We are living in a knowledge-based economy, and intellectual property is becoming increasingly valuable. Companies and individuals ought to identify their intellectual assets and take necessary anti-piracy measures to protect them. Google scraping is an effective anti-piracy measure that any company or individual can implement at a minimal cost.