PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Developing intellectual property often requires considerable investments of time and money. Since organizations depend on it for branding, manufacturing and selling their unique products and/or services, it is vital that they protect their intellectual property.
Defining Intellectual Property
Intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term to describe original creations. Commonly among an organization's most valuable tangible assets, they include discoveries and inventions, written and artistic works, designs, symbols, names, software, processes and images.
Intellectual property is divided into three basic categories:
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Trademarks for signs, brands and other creative works to distinguish goods and services, |
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Copyrights for written and creative material, including art, music, sound recordings, |
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films and
broadcasts, and |
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Patents for the technical and functional aspects of products and processes. |
Any organization is vulnerable to charges of IP infringement by simply making, using, selling, importing or selling products and services that owns trademarks, service marks or copyrighted materials. Entities possessing sought-after products, processes or methods of doing business are also vulnerable. Since nearly any organization is at risk, every organization needs IP coverage.
The first step to safeguarding intellectual property is to register it with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or the U.S. Copyright Office. But that is not enough.
Intellectual Property Coverage Is Critical
Registering intellectual property, however, does not protect organizations from lawsuits. Since the legal and civil codes governing are often complex and convoluted, they easily become long running and expensive. These lawsuits can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is why lacking IP insurance can financially jeopardize an organization. Therefore, having IP coverage is more cost effective than incurring the sometimes millions of dollars in legal costs necessary to protect intellectual property.
An Intellectual Property policy pays the legal and judgment costs, up to policy limits, to defend an organization if another entity tries to claim infringement of:
• copyrights
• trademarks
• patents
• business models
• trade secrets
• processes
• applications
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