Your website, your assets: making the most of IP rights

19.07.2021

Ideas can no longer be protected, and that is a fact, but expressions of ideas can and a website is such an expression. Depending on the idea you have, it can fall under the protective mantle of the different types of IP. At a first glance, protecting your intangible assets seems either like a waste of time, or like something not worth investing into because one cannot really see the actual value given by the legal protection offered. Yet, time and time again entrepreneurs and developers profited from their websites, by exploiting the IP rights associated with logo, text, sounds or the code itself.

Why trademark

An initial form that a website can take is the one that indicates its name. But the domain of the site itself does not offer way too much protection. There have been many instances in which entrepreneurs were taken aback to find that they do not really own their domain name and that they only have a license to use it. This can become rather problematic, in the event that your brand is your actual domain name, thus registering it as a generic trademark and renewing it is strongly recommended to ensure that no one else with uses your name. You also need to make sure that it covers all services and products that you intend to offer and try to think big and extend your application beyond the country where the business is emerging and include other states as well.

The perks of copyright

If your use a content management system (CMS), which is one of the most popular software used to build and create content, like WordPress, then know that you do not have any sort of rights to the given platform, nor you own the server that hosts the website. However, if the website is built in Java or Python or any other programming language, from the very outset, then you can protect it, either through copyright or, if you can prove that your software is brand new, innovative and can apply industrially, you can even apply for a patent.

Besides that, you can and should protect the content, including text, data, graphics, layout, sounds, images and so on. Thus, any article, video material, or picture, might be considered as copyright and might be protected by simply publishing this content on the website. Which can be very helpful in the event of an infringement.

Conclusion

The best business card for your company is your website and that translates into a strong marketing and branding strategy that has the potential to either make or break your business. Your website is the gateway through which consumers get to know you and get accustomed to what you sell, be it products or services and if there is something that is often overlooked, is that profit comes not only from what you sell, but from what you own and protect. So, yes, you can monetize your website inasmuch as you can monetize your products, but just like products need IP protection, so is your website. Knowing what and how to protect it, gives any entrepreneur an advantage on the market and an incredible boost when strategizing its business.

COSMOVICI IP

4, Rue du Commerce
CH - 1204 Geneva
Switzerland

office@cosmovici-ip.com
+41 22 531 00 05

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