The Different Types of IP Advice

Why you need to protect your IP through IP rights

IP rights provide their owner with unique rights of commercial leverage in the marketplace and provide protection against competitors. As an IP owner, you can create relationships with others to commercialise your innovation and prevent others from exploiting your innovation without your permission.

For small businesses this protection can be the key to survival, if not prosperity. Smart exploitation of IP rights can bring lucrative business opportunities or enhance your profit potential.

Unless you protect your products or services under the IP law relevant to your innovation, your competitors may copy them without the fear of being sued. In doing this they piggyback on your intellectual effort and research funds to bring your innovation to market. This may leave you to compete only on price or service rather than product differentiation. Any costs incurred to make your goods and services different and/or well known would potentially be lost to your competitor.

Using IP as a business asset puts your business on a more secure grounding and may redefine the relationship you have with competitors, suppliers, staff, financiers and potential partners. The value of IP and its contribution to business success is increasingly being recognised by entrepreneurial business practitioners, financiers and the courts.

To use IP effectively you need to understand the various forms of IP that can be protected in Australia, the rationale behind each of these, and the ways each can be used to create competitive advantage. You should be aware of the potential opportunities as well as the limitations of IP.

Because IP laws provide pre-defined outcomes, you can use your IP contracts to provide considerable leverage in close, everyday relationships with partners, staff, suppliers, competitors and financiers.