One of my goals this year is to get 5000 small businesses protecting their IP
Have you heard, one of my goals this year is to get 5,000 small businesses protecting their intellectual property.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that 70% of small businesses have got zero intellectual property protection. That means seven out of 10 people reading this as business owners probably have no intellectual property protection.
Why do I care?
I care because I see clients coming into my office week after week after week working their guts out, building up a business, creating things, and because they didn’t take the steps to protect what they created, they end up either having somebody else steal their intellectual property, the material that they’ve built up, their good reputation. Or they find out that they are accidentally infringing somebody else.
So for example, if you are a registered business name, that business name could infringe a registered trademark. The only way to avoid that is to have your own business name registered as a trademark.
It could be that you have just used an image off the internet without permission. The copyright owner could sue you for that.
Don’t even get me started on importers who bring different goods into the country and inadvertently infringe patents and designs! How heartbreaking it is when they have to destroy the goods they paid to import (because the goods turned out to infringe someone else’s intellectual property).
There is so much going on in the intellectual property space and just a tiny little mistake by a business owner could cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So will you join me in my challenge this year of trying to get 5,000 business owners to protect their intellectual property?
You as a business owner can do some of it yourself. Such as adding a copyright notice to your material that you create.
As business owners we need to protect our mental resources. The things that we put out into the world. Because although we love people, we’re also business owners who have to earn a living and it is so unfair when your hard work is just snatched away from you.
Book a complimentary phone call with Cathryn, by clicking this link or ask a question by email to website@acacialaw.com (only available to people with businesses based in Australia or New Zealand). She would love to chat to you about your IP and business legal questions.
Cathryn Warburton is the Legal Lioness. With more than 2 decades of experience behind her, she legally
bulletproofs her client’s businesses and protects them from business bullies. She is a multi-international award winning lawyer, trade mark attorney, patent attorney, author, mentor and keynote speaker.
