Intellectual Property for Startups 101

By: KS Kader

When you start a company, intellectual property, or IP as we’ll call it for the rest of this post, is something to think about from the moment you have the idea.

IP is your work product. IP can cover everything around your company – including, but not limited to your software code, your name and logo, the formula and application of the algorithm you use, right down to your marketing content.

I’d like to prime all of this with one simple suggestion that will save you a ton of headache later: Your company should own all of your intellectual property. Make sure this is the case before you raise a round, or try to exit. Do this by making sure every founder and employee signs the appropriate agreements handing over their work product to the company.

I’m sure you’ve heard the terms “Copyright”, “Trademark or Service Mark”, “Trade Secret” and “Patent” get thrown around a lot – and you’ve Googled them all. How do you differentiate between each? What’s the governing body of law? How does your IP relate? Fear not, this article will give you a very high level primer of IP 101 for Startups. Let’s begin:

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