Intellectual Property is creations of the mind, including inventions, art, symbols, graphic design, written works, and more. These pieces of property are often found in businesses and need to be protected to save you from costly legal fees. IP has laws surrounding it, but it can often be hard to prevent IP theft when you are a smaller organization or fully based online. IP theft can damage a reputation, undermine economic growth, and cause you to lose out on time and money you spent creating these pieces.
It is important for businesses to check in on their online intellectual property frequently if they want to protect their business from IP theft. The increase in digital technology has made it easier for hackers to steal creative works and pass them off as their own. This blog will share some ideas on how to protect your intellectual property and ensure your livelihood is safe.
Make Sure Ownership Of IP Is In Order
Ensuring the ownership of your intellectual property is in order is the best way to protect yourself from IP theft. Setting up contracts with employees or partners stating that the work is yours and having them sign will help if something does get stolen. Reviewing who has access to the property will also help avoid theft from unauthorized users. Making legal agreements with clarity on who the property owner is can be done before any copyright or trademarks are registered.
Use Encryption
Encryption is your best friend when it comes to intellectual property. Encrypting stored data, files shared in your organization, or messages about property creation will lower the risk of online IP theft. While extreme hackers could get around your encryption wall, it does help stop lesser threats from accessing your creative works. Protection for information that flows into the cyberworld in order to be created is one major area that benefits from encryption. Make sure to set up encryption for all communications and correspondence, not just the important ones.
Do A Cybersecurity Audit
Every so often, it can be helpful to conduct an audit throughout your business. During an audit, make sure to look at what parts of your company have the highest breach risk. Looking at multiple cybersecurity platforms and safety perimeters can be time-consuming, but it is worthwhile if you want to find digital weaknesses that could lead to IP theft. During an audit, look at what needs to be mediated first and what is the highest risk to your business. Simply changing passwords or avoiding sketchy email attachments isn’t enough to prevent cyber breaches anymore.
Utilize Threat Modeling
Oftentimes, the best way to overcome a problem is to look at every outcome, negative and positive. Threat modeling can be a way for businesses to adjust their security measures around online IP theft. Modeling a threat looks like this: pretending to or creating an artificial threat to see how far a hacker could get and what they could access. Penetration testing or threat modeling shouldn’t be done by just anyone, but looking for weak points in your system can be easily done this way. It is also important to see how easily company electronics, employee data, and corporate information could be accessed while doing these checks.
Educate Employees
While many of us have been online for years now, it can be difficult to understand the level of security and scrutiny that companies go through to protect their creative process. Humans are often the reason for online security breaches because we make errors quite frequently. As a business, it is important to train employees about the dangers of online IP theft and what not to do while working for your company. Using VPNs, keeping company secrets or insight classified, and anti-phishing training are all good places to start with employees. Preventing online IP theft is possible when your entire team is on board.
The Effects Of Online IP Theft
The ripple effects of intellectual property theft can be substantial, especially if you have an online breach that you are unable to track. When someone steals your intellectual property, it can lead to intense legal proceedings, lawyer fees, and even cost you your hard work on the project.
Those who steal intellectual works and creative processes are undermining the economic growth and stability of our society. Taking away creativity, failing to formulate new ideas, and creating counterfeit products can damage more than just one company’s reputation. By lowering the cost of a creative work by creating a lower quality product, the market becomes oversaturated, and prices are ultimately affected for years to come.
Other negative side effects of online IP theft include:
- Job loss
- Health and safety risks for consumers
- Damage to your brand image
- Lower incentive to create
- Reduced market opportunities
- Lower quality items and products
- Leak of personal and financial information
IP Lawyers From WW Partners
Our legal team can help you with intellectual property, business management, and much more. Our lawyers are well-versed in the law and can help businesses and individuals get their desired results in a legal case. Reach out to WW Partners if you have been a victim of IP theft or another criminal act.