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What is IP Protection? How can an early stage Idea really be protected?



In my journey as an entrepreneur and being apart of different early stage ideas I began to question how I could protect my idea. Whats stopping someone from completely stealing my concepts, logos, processes? The realization came when I started to work with others on the idea via Upwork and Fivver. These websites allow for you to build out concepts of your idea in many different forms by hiring a freelancer to do it for you. Using these sites was about me furthering the idea and at the same time I wondered about why it was challenging to figure out if I was protected or not via the company. Did I need my own non-disclosure agreement. In researching Upwork, which is the website used consistently in my process of developing ideas, I found out they offer suggestions to make sure you have whoever is working with you sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) also known as an IP Assignment.


I came to the conclusion that I felt uneasy about giving someone my information about the idea and or my "IP". I quickly realized I needed to get an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). Now the real question was how was I going to do that. I looked up different templates online and sent them over to my legal advisor. He took a while to get back to me on this because the project is very specific and could need different detail. I eventually reached out to my friend at Yale Law School who gave me some more specific templates about IP protection because he worked for a startup specific company who has done that a million times. But for the every day entrepreneur this was a tricky process. How could we make this process more efficient and more custom to the entrepreneur?

Once I had a good IP assignment to give to anyone who views or works with me on any company information I felt a little better giving someone the keys to my idea. In the end I found out an IP assignment or NDA can only protect you by giving you grounds to take action in court if someone does infringe on your idea. In the end it is an important step to have these structural forms setup so you have a base to work with. If you jump and start to work with someone without any sort of protection you might regret that in the end. In history there have been many cases of this happening. One example https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/business/apple-samsung-patent-trial.html on the biggest stage is here.

I wanted to learn about IP protection in general and found a really good podcast out of Fordham Law. I am not an expert by any means but this podcast discusses general concepts and the importance in differences between types of IP protection formation. Here it is below. Have a listen if you are an entrepreneur who wants to learn more about protecting your idea.


https://www.startuplawnchpad.org


Cheers,


LegalMe.app (coming soon)



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