Business Moves - Protecting your Idea

Protecting your idea — patents and intellectual property

Questacon > Smart Moves > Business and Competitions > Protecting Your Idea

Got a great idea? Developing a cunning new product or service? If you don’t protect it someone else may walk away with your profits!

If you have a unique idea you can legally protect it so that no one can use your idea without asking. Why should you take the time to find out about boring legal stuff? Well, if your idea isn’t protected, and someone steals it, they end up with the profits and you lose out… So protect your idea by checking out information on defending your intellectual property (IP) from being hijacked.

The first thing you should do is… KEEP THE IDEA SECRET!!! If you speak with anyone about your idea, including scientists, business advisors, partners, who ever… they should sign a confidentiality agreement beforehand. This legal document prevents them from taking advantage of your idea and developing it for themselves.

While you are still perfecting your product or service, you should be super careful about talking about your idea in public. If you demonstrate, sell or discuss your invention in public before you file for a patent, you probably won’t get one. A patent is a legal way of protecting ideas. Its expensive, but it works.

The best place to go for general information about patents and intellectual property is IP Australia (www.ipaustralia.gov.au ).They reckon IP is: 'the property of your mind or intellect’. They also define IP to include patents, trademarks, designs, confidential information/trade secrets, copyright and a few others as well. Some of these are cheap to set up. Some are more expensive.

If you are serious about protecting your intellectual property, you need the advice of a patent / trade mark attorney. This advice can be expensive, but if you think your idea is worth protecting, you will definitely need it. For a list of patent attorneys (mostly in capital cities), visit either the Institute of Patent & Trademark Attorneys or IP Australia . You can also find out about some other patents at pages such as Free Patents Online and WikiPatents.

More about that great idea Check out our Teachers' Resource where you can generate your ideas further... Other links about Intellectual Property, Patents, etc
	Australian Copyright Council http://www.copyright.org.au/newbie.htm . Copyright legally protects work produced through writing, visual images, music and moving images.
	The United States based website http://www.uspto.gov/go/kids/kidprimer.html also answers some questions you may have about IP.
	http://www.ip-links.de/ is a European site but it could help with some basics of IP. Categories include intellectual property offices, courts, and case law databases.