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Don't Be In The Dark About Our Legal System

Hello, I'm Karla Mitchell. Going through a legal case can be very expensive and challenging. I won't go into details, but I recently underwent my own legal battle that lasted several years. It is finally over and I successfully received a settlement, but I had to spend so much time studying law in order to play my role in my own court case. While I found a great attorney at one point, I felt completely lost initially and I don't want anyone else to experience the same thing. So I decided to create this blog for those who would like to know more about law.

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Don't Be In The Dark About Our Legal System

Starting a Business? Discover How an Intellectual Property Lawyer Will Help

by Andrew Martin

Did you decide that you want to run a business? You may have some creative ideas and trade secrets to use that will help your business take off and succeed in the industry. While it is a good thing to have innovative thoughts and secrets that will help you manage your business while providing the best products to the customers, you must make moves to protect those ideas and secrets. Without any protection, someone else could potentially steal those ideas and use them to their advantage, causing frustration for you and competition for the business you plan to start.

How to Protect Ideas and Various Trade Secrets

If the last thing you want to experience is theft of ideas and trade secrets, hire an intellectual property lawyer. The valuable information you plan to use for your business is intellectual property that belongs to you because you came up with those specific concepts. The intellectual property lawyer can help you get a patent or copyright for your ideas and secrets. If everything gets copyrighted and patented, you could easily file a lawsuit against anyone who attempted to steal those ideas, thus making sure that the theft of your intellectual property does not happen.

When obtaining a patent or copyright, you have to complete applications with your intellectual property lawyer. The applications to fill out include:

  • Basic Utility Patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office
  • Copyright Form from the US Copyright Office

There are filing fees. Filing for a patent can cost thousands of dollars. The initial price for filing to get a copyright on something starts at $45.

Is an Intellectual Property Lawyer Needed?

Although you can fill out both application forms for a patent and copyright by yourself, it is not best to do so without a lawyer. The intellectual property lawyer will go through a list of patented items to ensure that no one else has had the same ideas and patented them at some point to keep you from wasting your time. Your lawyer can help you accurately complete the applications. When handling something so pivotal to your business, you are going to want to do it right the first time to avoid delaying the process of getting your patent and copyright.

As you work on building a business with some creative ideas and trade secrets that you know are sure to help you succeed, take time to speak to an intellectual property lawyer. The lawyer will go over each step of applying for a patent and copyright with you to help you get it done.

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