How to Protect Your Software Idea Through Intellectual Property (IP) Laws
Software development is an expensive undertaking. Arguably, few if any major developers would be in this market if not for protection offered by intellectual property laws. In the United States , works gain some inherent protection upon creation under common copyright laws. This affords some protection to even the smallest and less financed software developers.
However, the common laws limit damages in almost all cases to a few thousand dollars at best. As a developer who has put substantial financial backing into the production of a particular software, you may wonder what other benefits can be attained through using the protection of various laws. Quite simply put: you can protect yourself by making sure no one else takes advantage of your hard work by getting a lawyer and moving to place your software into the realm of three forms of protection.
Beyond common copyright laws, there are extended laws offering additional protection. These laws involve copyright registry, trade mark branding laws, software distribution laws, worker-disclosure laws, and patent laws. Each gives an extra layer of protection to your intellectual property. Through the use of copyright registry laws, a developer formally registers his software in a way that affords substantial protection.
Copyright registry protect by taking your software and officially registering it with the US government. As part of this generally there is a need to submit some source code along with compiled code. An official copyright will be registered, and should any clone products come to light with very similar features, a copyright lawsuit can be brought up.
Using branding laws, business specific words, slogans, and logos can be registered in one of literally dozens of categories. Calling a website “Tide(TM)” may not be a branding law protection violation, but making a soap called tide would fall inside the scope of the detergent’s manufacturer’s law-granted protections.
If you are choosing to trademark your business for using software, be advised that the laws only protect you in markets for which you apply and in some instances participate in. Software distribution laws involve setting agreements into place that protect your software. These laws are currently being challenged in a variety of lawsuits and it will be interesting to see how they all work out. Currently, however, Autodesk is the manufacturer of AutoCAD.
The agreement set into law upon opening their software protects the developer by prohibiting sell, lease, or transfer of a license agreement. As a result, copies of software purchased from Autodesk are exclusive to single machines and single users. This helps protect profit margins more so than software, but as a developer that’s ultimately your goal.
Worker-disclosure laws place protective limits on what employees can say or do related to your software projects. The two commonly used forms of protection are non-disclosure and non-compete agreements. In exchange for employment and some tangible perks, you can require employees to sign agreements not to work for competitors, a very protective measure.
Non-disclosure gives you legal protection should an employee violate your trust by informing competitors through blogging, direct espionage, or indirectly through remarks made to friends in family. This protection is one of the best forms of protecting development of your software.
Finally, patent laws allow you to protect intellectual property through the process of registering proprietary information and techniques.
It’s surprising to see what all is patented, but during the time you register a patent, even if it does not go through, you can protect yourself by issuing patent pending statements. If your patent request is eventually approved (the process of protection through patent can take years), you will be able to take legal course against any who violated your patents beginning with the application receipt date.
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