Question

What steps can be taken to protect intellectual property (both domestically and internationally)? In business, do you feel the best defense is a good offense? In other words, in constant innovation and improvement more important than intellectual property protection measures? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Intellectual property rights are the rights to prevent any kind of original, genuine work from being copied or stolen. It can be treated as an asset for businesses it can only be used by the company registering it under its name and can never be used by the competitors. There are different ways to protect intellectual property both domestically and internationally. These are as follows-

1. To create copyrights, patents, and trademarks and to get them registered.- Copy right can be created for both the tangible and intangible types of work It will have a validity of more than 70 years. By taking copyright of some property, nobody else can have the right to access that property. Patents are generally used for new products ie. no person can use anybody's innovation unless a license is obtained from innovator to use that product. The innovator has to file a patent to protect innovation. Trademarks are used to protect the logos, symbols e.t.c. that belongs to a particular business. The trademarks are to register to prevent someone else to use it.

2. Secured contracts- If some contracts are made then for securing intellectual property rights, there may be clauses relating to nondisclosure of everything, confidentially in disclosing the matter, secret agreement e.t.c. This will help to refrain the confidential information to become public.

3. Security measure regarding technology- Many passwords or restricted access can be used for protecting the computer machines or network or data from being hacked.

4. Ensuring the transactions- For intellectual property rights, every person should be safe in the eyes of law from being sued. Hence, for doing this the company should ensure strict punishment for those violating the intellectual property right and should also ensure their safety for being sued from plagiarism. So, the transactions of every company should be honest ie. they should neither sue anybody or nor anybody should sue them.

In business, I feel the best defense is a good offense is a good strategy as in today's competitive world one has to be defensive to survive the competition. One invests a huge sum of money ina business and should try to defend the sum in the market so that if it earns a profit. But if the sum does not make a profit , it should not make loss also i.e. the amount should not go below the principal invested amount. In today's competitive world, everybody is busy and doing their best to achieve success, so every business should try to innovate itself continuously, this will keep the competitors busy to change themselves and the business will be able to defend or sustain the competition.

Constant innovation and improvement are more important than intellectual property protection measures as innovation leads to something new product or procedure or idea e .t.c. It is very important to innovate as that forms the base of a person's growth or success. Without out-innovating new things, there can be no intellectual property right. It is connected to prevent something new and unique. If innovation is not there, everybody will use the same thing and there is no need to protect that under intellectual property rights. For the smooth running of an economy, there should be constant innovation in both technical as well as nontechnical things. There is always be a scope for improvement. to survive in this competitive world. A passion for innovation and improvement will keep the competition alive in the business world. So, it is important to have continuous innovation or improvement since, without that, there will be nothing to protect under intellectual property rights.