Attorneys give advice on protecting intellectual property

By: Brad Rhen

There are many costs associated with running a business. Things such as payroll, insurance, supplies and rent can can leave little room for profit.

One sometimes overlooked cost is protecting the things that a company creates: its intellectual property.

Small and new companies often overlook safeguarding their intellectual property, while established companies take it seriously, said Salvatore Anastasi, partner and chair of the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Barley Snyder in Malvern. Usually, he said, most of the money at startups goes back into growing the company.

That can be problematic.

“We often find companies that as they grow and bump into their competition they find themselves being sued for patent infringement or some other type of intellectual property infringement,” Anastasi said. “So sometimes they learn the hard way, but it's sort of an evolutionary thing that as a company grows, they must have a portfolio of intellectual property protection to remain competitive.”

Four main protections

Intellectual property can refer to a variety of things that are the result of creativity, such as an invention, a manuscript, a design, a work of art or a song. Unlike tangible assets like vehicles, computers or desks, it sometimes can be difficult to prove ownership of intellectual property because it is a collection of ideas and concepts.

There are four main ways to protect intellectual property in the United States: patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. A patent applies to a specific product design or invention; a trademark to a name, phrase or symbol; a copyright to a written document; and a trade secret to something developed by a business to give them a competitive advantage.

“Intellectual property, generally speaking, means anything that a business owner considers to be a valuable asset of the business, but which is not tangible, not something that one cannot touch or measure very easily,” said George Balchunas, a business and transactional lawyer at Kozloff Stout Attorneys, Spring Township. “It can include the business's reputation, its lists of customers or vendors, and its name or the names of products that it markets and sells.

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