How Do You Protect Your Creations?

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If you created something original, you may have a certain degree of protection against someone else using, claiming, modifying, or selling it. In other words, you may have intellectual property. Knowing how to legally protect your creations is essential to retaining ownership of them.

In the simplest terms, intellectual property (IP) pertains to things you create with your mind; not the ideas themselves, but the expression of the ideas in some form.

A thought or notion that’s been floating around your head may be a great idea for a future product or service, but it isn’t yet intellectual property.

There are four common types of IP:
Copyrights
Patents
Trademarks (including design rights)
Trade secrets

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