ESYB2 031 - How to Protect Business Ideas
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[00:00:00] Now, let's talk about six ways to protect intellectual property and a lot of entrepreneurs, they struggle. What's the difference between a patent and a trademark? When should I do NDA? What is NDA? Is it worth it? Let's talk about all that. So, first of all, a little bit of a disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer.

This is not legal advice. For legal advice, please use an attorney. And keep in mind, laws vary from country to country and from state to state even, so you gotta use a local attorney who understands the law in your area. Different laws apply differently. So what I'll be giving you is just a general overview, but enough for you to make sense of things.

So, let's talk about the difference between copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Copyrights are for protecting written works like books, music, things like that. Patents are for protecting Inventions, let's say you made a new product or a new process or a new [00:01:00] algorithm, you can protect that with a patent.

Patents are very expensive and time consuming. It's sometimes upwards of 10, 000 and many, many months to get a patent. So it's a big decision whether you want to have that. And trademarks, they protect things like business names, logos, slogans. So for example, if you consider Nike. That little logo, that is trademarked.

And also the slogan, just do it, that's trademarked. And the name Nike, that's also trademarked. So all of that is trademarked. So hopefully that gives you an overview. Now a lot of people also ask, Will my idea get stolen? Is that a risk? Usually it's an overblown concern. I can't tell you not to worry about it because every rare once in a while it happens.

But it almost never happens because people are too busy With their own work, and even though you think your idea is good, probably they don't. And anyway, it's not the idea that matters, it's You're implementation of it and making [00:02:00] it a success because everybody will copy you once it's successful anyway It's gonna be out there But if you're worried, you should always always always work with people you can trust.

I know it's a gray area Sometimes we think we can trust people sometimes we don't but often we have a And if you're feeling a little desperate, maybe for money, for help, you might get into business with somebody that you don't really know if you can trust them yet. And that's usually a sign for bad things to come.

So just keep that as a rule of thumb and always have that as one of your guiding. work with people you can trust. Now on the more practical side, there are things that are called NDA, non disclosure agreement. It's an actual legal document that says that when people sign it, they agree not to disclose whatever you're going to tell them.

And this is for people who are outside of your company and for employees. Now there's a lot of. Debate about usefulness and application of NDA [00:03:00] because they waste time. They're very difficult to enforce. I mean, you're literally going to have to sue somebody to enforce that. And it irritates some people.

For example, I don't like when people ask me to sign an NDA. Investors don't like when they're asked to sign an NDA. First of all, they can't because sometimes they have competing companies they're helping. And so do I, and it's just a waste of time. And I rather would focus on the business rather than.

The legalities of protecting the idea that I don't, I'm not even going to steal it. It's a total waste, but the NDAs do protect a tiny bit of deterrence just by kind of scaring people, like letting them know, Hey, you are under NDA, so don't do anything crazy. So tiny bit of benefit in many cases, I'd skip it.

But again, this is not legal advice. That's just my opinion. And also another tool you have is a document called non compete agreement. This is for business partners or employees who work at your company. And the agreement is that let's say they leave for some [00:04:00] agreed upon amount of time. They're not going to be able to either start or get hired by a direct competitor of yours.

So these are the tools to protect your intellectual property.

