When you think outside the box and develop a new invention or idea, you must protect it; otherwise, all your work will be in vain. Intellectual property lawyers can help you legally protect your ideas from theft by ensuring you gain all the rights related to your invention.
They can also help you decide which type of intellectual property rights benefit your invention and successfully earn legal protection for it.
The three major types of intellectual property are patents, copyrights, and trademarks, and each of them has slightly different procedures and benefits that creative people can use.
Patents
Patents are helpful for physical inventions, business procedures, or computer algorithms.
If you invented the machine, medicine, or anything of the sort. In that case, you need to apply for a patent with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to gain the intellectual property rights for the invention.
Professionals will analyze your idea in the respective field in which it falls and compare it to similar inventions to see if it’s something new and original.
There will be a lot of paperwork and research to be done for your patent to be submitted and approved, but you will have a 20-year expiration date on your invention. After that, you can decide whether to renew your patent rights or give them up.
As long as your patent is active, no one can reproduce your idea or use it without your permission.
If someone does, or if you are having trouble getting your patent approved, an intellectual property lawyer can help you enforce your rights or get your patent approved. A patent is approved, on average, in 25.5 months starting from the application.
Copyrights
Once you write or record something, copyrights help you retain exclusive rights on how your work is used, distributed, or sold. For example, if you write a book, you should register it with the U.S. Copyright Office, and no one can reproduce it without permission and sell it for personal gain.
You can grant others permission to distribute and sell your works and gain economic rewards if you wish, but the most important thing is that others cannot use your work. Copyrights last for a lifetime and even 70 years after an author dies or more, depending on other factors.
It takes, on average, about three months to have your copyright registered.
Trademarks
Trademarks are essential for businesses that want to secure their brand, product, and company. You don’t necessarily need to have a company to create a trademark and retain the rights for it, but you should start a company at some point if you have a trademark.
A good example of a trademark is Coca-Cola which owns the trademarks for Coca-Cola and Coke. This means that competitors cannot use these terms in their ads, or you can’t create a company in the same industry and use those trademarks.
Trademarks are useful if you want to stand out to consumers and expand your company.
The best part about trademarks is that they don’t expire, unlike patents or copyrights. However, the trademark must remain in use to be considered valid. Otherwise, it can be used by other companies.
The process of registering and getting your trademark approved lasts between 12 to 18 months, on average.