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.