Protecting Your Business’ Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets

This Element is an excerpt from The Truth About Starting a Business (9780137144501), by Bruce R. Barringer. Available in print and digital formats.

Failing to protect your intellectual property can destroy your business. Learn how to keep it from happening to you.

Imagine you’ve started a business to produce a new type of smoke alarm specifically for kitchens. It’s similar to other smoke alarms but is more capable of detecting a kitchen fire than any alarm on the market. You’ve named it “Kitchen Sentry.” Your tagline is “We Protect Cooks and Kitchens.” You just acquired the Internet domain name www.kitchensentryfirmalarm.com. Fortunately, while you were developing your product, you....