When you spend a huge amount of time and effort building up a business, the last thing that you want is for it to be copied. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who have the intention of doing just that. Business copycats have existed ever since entrepreneurialism took off, but there are still some steps that you can take to make sure that your intellectual property has the highest level of protection that it possibly can. Here are one or two ideas that you can put into practice for yourself:
Website Visitors
A website is very much like a modern shop window. Of course, you want to encourage as many people to visit as possible, and this inevitably means that your competitors or other people looking to copy your idea are going to have a look at what you have to offer. There are a few best-practice steps that you can take along the way. First of all, you should make sure that your copyright notice is displayed in plain sight on your website. This can act as a deterrent to stop people from wilfully taking your imagery or written content. In terms of images, one possible step that you can take is to put a watermark sign on them. As an alternative, you can even disable the right-click function, which means that the images cannot be copied and downloaded.
As for your domain name, you need to make sure that this is registered with a verified agency. If you need any further legal advice and support with regard to this, you could always look into hiring an eminent domain attorney for yourself. Registering your trademark is a good idea in general as this will help to prevent similar businesses from springing up and trying to do something very similar to what you are offering.
Buying Customers
Another potential source of leaks comes from buying customers themselves. This is particularly the case if what you are selling is considered the intellectual property of any description. A few examples of this include webinars, eBooks, and design templates. Businesses may even appear selling your own content, which is devastating to see when you have put in so much time and hard work. While physical products are more challenging to copy, this can still happen at some point along the way.
Whenever you are offering a digital download, you should double-check to ensure that a clear copyright notice is included. You should also list out your terms and conditions with regard to how the files can be used. If you are selling physical products, one potential route that you could go down is to patent them. However, this can prove to be a pricey choice, so you need to ensure that you are comfortable with this.
Contractors Offering Project Services
There are all sorts of contractors or agencies that you may decide to outsource certain services to, such as website development, graphic design, or copywriting. Access to your business should be strictly limited to the services that they are offering. Otherwise, they could seek to sell on your business processes further down the line. When you are drafting up a contractor agreement, you need to be extra careful that the terms state that they cannot sell it on. There should also be a clear confidentiality clause listed as well, which will help to prevent any intellectual property from being passed on to a competitor somewhere along the way. You should always have a final agreement that makes your ownership of the finished product as clear as it possibly can be.
Employees Working at Your Business
The final source of possible business leaks comes from your employees themselves. They have privileged access to all sorts of areas of your business, including your client list, product marketing plans, and other assets that are extremely valuable to your business. As such, you should have a confidentiality clause and a non-compete agreement in any draft of a contract that you create. You should make it clear that they are not permitted to replicate anything such as tools, templates, and business practices. Also, you should make sure that you take ownership of any intellectual property made on the company time.
If your business idea is copied, it can be a seriously devastating blow to anybody. These are just a few of the best ways of preventing this from happening to you. So, now’s the time to put them into practice.
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