What Can Prevent My Business Idea From Being Stolen?

Entrepreneurship can be very cutthroat

Entrepreneurship can be very cutthroat. You may have been considering starting your own small business, but wondered if it would be worth the effort. You may have thought even if you had an original idea, one of the bigger corporations would come along and steal your idea. Then you'd have to kiss goodbye any kind of profit you could have made from it.

Thankfully, there is an answer to these concerns, and it is to protect your small business trade secrets through the use of patents and non-disclosure agreements. First to have a patent you need an original idea. Different countries have different rules regarding patents, but most of the industrialized world now follows the rules of the WTO, or world trade organization, for receiving a patent. WTO rules cover patents for products, but also cover patents for original business processes as well.

Under WTO rules, a patent will have a lifetime of twenty years. During those two decades, no other business is permitted to try to copy or reproduce that exact same product or process. If they do anyways despite the existence of your patent, your recourse is to sue for infringement on the patent. If you win the case in civil court, you will be awarded damages to compensate for the competitor cutting into your business.

However, as mentioned, the patent will eventually expire after those twenty years have passed. You may think you are now completely vulnerable to the corporate vultures that will come and steal your product and your business. However there is one safeguard. That is to protect your intellectual property from the public.

The best way to protect the intellectual property of an original product or business process is to employ non-disclosure agreements or NDAs for short. NDAs are a kind of legal agreement available in many countries including the United States. The owner of the intellectual property would make these kinds of agreements with employees and other companies it does business with. Under a non-disclosure agreement, the second party would agree not to disclose the trade secrets surrounding your intellectual property to the public.

Let's say you developed a brand new recipe for spicy flavored fried chicken. You also don't have a patent on this recipe for whatever reason. To prevent your recipe from ever being leaked to competitors like KFC or Popeye's, you would make sure that everyone who has access to the recipe, including employees and other businesses you work with, signs non-disclosure agreements. This way the recipe will remain a secret, and your company will be the only one using this special spicy fried chicken recipe.

It may seem that large established businesses have every advantage in the world, such as unlimited resources for things like marketing to drown out your business. With patents and NDAs you can have something they can't have access to unless you choose to let them. It would be worth your while to learn more about how your small business can benefit from patents or NDAs. Why not contact a small business consultant today?

by: Nick Messe

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