When you’re neck deep in starting a new business, you may not take the time to properly protect your inventions. As a result, you could see your intellectual property stolen or you could be sued for inadvertently stealing the intellectual property of others. Here are five easy tips on how to quickly develop an intellectual property strategy, specifically with respect to patents.
1) Give each team member an information disclosure form
The first key step to getting a patent is identifying ideas that are potentially novel and inventive. Discovering and understanding your employees’ inventions as early as possible will enable your patent lawyer to draft earlier applications with more accurate and comprehensive disclosures, which means stronger patents. Circulating an information disclosure form to your team will help your startup learn about technology being created internally.