Intellectual Property and Your Startup

Url: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2017/03/06/app-to-market-intellectual-property.aspx

Now that you've gotten deep into thinking about your startup, it's time to think about the meaning of intellectual property. So, what is it and why is it important to define it in the context of your startup?

You're familiar with personal property as well as business property. Personal and business property – those are fairly tangible items. It encompasses things like the desks, chairs, the computer equipment, the office lease. But your startup is riding on the code you – and maybe a team of other developers or people you might contract out for hire -- create and it's not as tangible.

So, have you given any thought to what encompasses your startup's Intellectual property, or IP? I bet it wasn't the first thing that came to mind when you started thinking about a startup or even when you were in the middle of doing the work necessary to get your startup off the ground. But guess what? It's incredibly important because, as you'll soon realize, your IP is the foundation of your startup. Let's look at the basics of IP, what make up the various types of items in an IP, what's their value, and what you should be doing to protect them.