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Intellectual property (IP) rights are valuable assets for your business - possibly among the most important it possesses.

Why is it important to protect intellectual property rights?

Your IP rights are important because they can:

• set your business apart from competitors
• be sold or licensed, providing an important revenue stream
• offer customers something new and different
• form an essential part of your marketing or branding
• be used as security for loans

You may be surprised at how many aspects of your business can be protected. Your name and logo, designs, inventions, works of creative or intellectual effort or trade marks that distinguish your business can all be types of IP. Explore the different types of IP in detail in our guides:

• trade marks
• get patent protection for your business
• copyright for your business
• unregistered and registered designs

Some IP rights are automatically safeguarded by IP law, but there are also other types of legal protection you can apply for.

To exploit your IP fully, it makes strong business sense to do all you can to secure it. You can then:

• protect it against infringement by others and ultimately defend in the courts your sole right to use, make, sell or import it
• stop others using, making, selling or importing it without your permission
• earn royalties by licensing it
• exploit it through strategic alliances
• make money by selling it

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) offers a number of online tools which can help you better understand your IP rights. .

Businesses in Northern Ireland can also get IP advice from .

The first step to protecting and exploiting your business' intellectual property (IP) successfully is carrying out a systematic intellectual property audit.

If you're doing an audit for the first time, you may be surprised by how many IP assets your company has and how valuable these are to your business.

How to carry out an IP audit?

To carry out an audit, look closely at your business to:

• identify where IP is used
• find out who owns the IP rights
• assess the value of the IP

This won't always be straightforward. Remember that your IP doesn't just reside in patents you hold or trade marks you have registered. You will also need to consider items such as trade secrets, bespoke software, written material, domain names, customer databases, etc.

Determining who owns IP

Intellectual property can have more than one owner. It can belong to individuals or businesses and be sold or transferred. It's important to determine exactly who owns IP in your business.

Generally speaking, you own intellectual property if you:

• created it (and it meets the requirements for copyright, patent or design protection)
• bought the rights from the creator or a previous owner
• have a brand that could be a trade mark, eg a well-known product name

Ownership can be more difficult to determine if the IP has been created by an employee or a freelance contractor.

What is the purpose of an IP audit?

The purpose of an audit is to:

• discover any IP assets which may be under-utilised
• identify potential risks to your business, eg costly legal proceedings
• enable you to plan and create a strategy to maintain and grow your business

Key questions an IP audit should raise are:

• Is your IP protected?
• Are you infringing anybody else's IP rights?
• Are you fully exploiting your IP?

Using a logbook to manage your IP

It can be helpful to record all research, notes, designs and meetings related to your ideas in a dated, tamper-proof logbook, with witness signatures where appropriate. This can serve as a powerful tool, helping you identify and protect your IP later on.

The type of intellectual property (IP) protection you can get depends on what you have created. Some types of protection arise automatically and others you have to apply for.

It's a good idea to assess what IP you have that needs protecting. This is called an intellectual property audit. An audit should help you determine the value of your IP assets and identify the best ways you should protect them.

Automatic protection

Several types of IP are automatically safeguarded by law from the moment of their creation.

Protection you have to apply for

Depending on the types of IP, you might need to register them to ensure sufficient protection.

Keep in mind also that multiple protections can relate to one product. For example, you might register a product's name and logo as a trademark, protect its unique shape as a registered design, patent a unique part of the product, and copyright artwork relating to it.

In addition to the rights outlined in the tables above, there are also other ways of protecting your original ideas, eg using confidentiality agreements, copy-protection devices, publication rights and trade secrets. For more on those, see trade secrets and other IP protection.

Intellectual property (IP) protection can be an important part of ensuring your business' success, so it's essential that you get it right. Mistakes can be time-consuming and expensive. They can even result in your business' failure.

IP protection is a complex legal area and getting help is often sensible.

Sources of IP assistance

Two main sources of IP help in Northern Ireland are:

• Invest Northern Ireland (NI) - Invest NI's specialist advisers can help you with patents, trade marks, design and copyright issues, as well as IP asset audits and licensing considerations. Find out more about , or call the Invest NI Helpline on Tel 0800 181 4422 for advice.
• Intellectual Property Office (IPO) - You can contact the IPO Information Centre on Tel 0300 300 2000 for advice or browse their .

Specialist legal advice

Patent attorneys are legally qualified in all aspects of patents, trade marks, design and copyright law. They are represented professionally by the .

Trade mark attorneys are legally qualified in trade mark, design and copyright issues. They are represented professionally by the .

Protecting your ideas overseas

IP protection is territorial, which means if you have registered protection in the UK it applies only within the UK. However, most countries have similar laws relating to IP and you can seek protection in other countries. See how to protect your intellectual property abroad.

It's likely that your employees will create certain types of intellectual property in the course of their employment. This does not just apply to those who are developing inventions in a research and development department. Staff could be creating potentially valuable IP if, for example, they are:

• compiling databases
• writing marketing material
• producing training brochures

Rights to IP created by employees generally belong to the employer.

IP and employment contracts

Showing that a member of staff has an employment contract is usually enough to prove you own all IP rights. But it's a good idea to state the position explicitly in separate clauses of employees' contracts.

This prevents any confusion arising - perhaps over work created outside office hours or as a by-product of specified work. You may also want to ask employees to record information relating to any innovative work they do in a logbook.

Moral rights vs economic rights

Unless otherwise explicitly stated in their contracts, employees will retain the moral rights to any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works created as part of their employment.

This means they can object to distortions of their work and retain the right to be identified as its author, but have no economic rights over it. If you want to obtain moral rights in your employees' work you must state this clearly in employment contracts.

Read more about your economic rights from owning copyright.

Dealing with sensitive information

Your employees may also have access to sensitive information about IP. It can make good business sense to include confidentiality clauses in your employment contracts or even consider non-disclosure agreements.

You may want to seek legal advice when drawing up contracts. .

You should take steps to ensure your business owns any intellectual property (IP) rights in work created for you by freelance contractors.

Freelancing and ownership of IP

You have an implied legal right to use IP rights in work you have commissioned from freelance contractors for the purpose it was originally intended for.

However, unless you take steps to assign the IP rights to your business you will neither own them nor be able to make additional use of them.

For example, unless you take adequate precautions, you could find your business would be unable to use a successful advertising slogan across all its promotional material if the phrase in question was coined by an agency that agreed to produce the slogan for a one-off newspaper campaign only.

Work-for-hire agreements

You should set out in a written agreement who will own, control and use the IP rights of all work created before a contractor produces anything for your business.

A clause assigning moral rights to your business could also be beneficial. Unless you do this, your contractors will retain the right to object to distortions of their work as well as the right to be identified as the author.

Remember that IP rights may reside in promotional material, bespoke software - such as databases and website content management systems - and other creative work which may be undertaken by freelance contractors.

You may want to seek legal advice when drawing up agreements with contractors. .

Some types of intellectual property (IP) rights (such as copyright and design rights) arise automatically. Others (like trade marks, design registration and patents) you have to apply for. It's important that you keep these secret until you've had a chance to register them.

Keep important hard-copy information locked up and, if you need to disclose your idea to someone, consider using a non-disclosure agreement.

How to avoid IP infringement

Take special care when trying to sell or license an invention, idea or design to an agent, manufacturer or potential partner, even if registration is complete.

Apart from a confidentiality agreement, if you have not protected your idea by applying for a patent, trade mark or design, it might be worth posting a dated copy of your idea to yourself using recorded delivery and lodging the unopened envelope and postal record with your bank or solicitor.

Note that this only shows that you were in possession of an idea on the date shown, but will not prove that you own it.

Protecting IP on digital files

Information stored electronically, particularly on computers connected to the internet, needs protection from both lapses in security and IT disasters.

You should:

• ensure sensitive information is kept in password-protected areas of your system
• install anti-virus software and keep it up to date
• install firewalls to prevent unauthorised users from hacking into your system and update them regularly
• back up your work and ensure back-ups are stored securely, preferably off-site
• protect your system against power surges and failures

See more on intellectual property crime and your business.

Your business name is the most basic intellectual property (IP) asset you have. It could also be the most important. Your business' reputation is tied up with its name so you don't want somebody else trading on it.

If the name of your business is distinctive to the goods and services you provide, you may be able to take legal action against anyone using it in the same or a similar field.

You will get additional legal protection if you register the name as a trade mark.

If you want to set up a website for your business you will probably want to register a domain name incorporating your business name, or any trade marks you have.

Business name vs domain name

It's important to recognise that having a trade mark doesn't give you an automatic right to a domain name incorporating your trade mark. Someone may have already registered the domain name you want for the same or different goods and services.

Find out more about the differences between domain names and trade marks.

You may be able to take legal action if you think:

• someone is using a domain name to pass off their goods and services as yours
• someone has taken out your trade mark as a domain name just to sell it back to you

Read more on domain name and trade mark conflicts.

You must avoid infringing other people's intellectual property (IP). If you infringe someone's IP the owner can take legal action against you. This can result in injunctions against you, along with orders to pay high costs and damages.

In some cases, infringers can even be found guilty of a criminal offence and be given a prison sentence or an unlimited fine.

Carrying out IP searches

It's a good idea to carry out searches to check you're not committing IP infringement. If you're planning to use a sign you should carry out a full trade mark search - find out how to search for trade marks.

You should also check with Companies House to ensure no one else is using your proposed trade mark as their company name.

Trade mark search

It is possible to register a trade mark that is the same as or similar to an existing trade mark, providing the owner of the earlier mark does not oppose the new application. However, it is still worth checking that no one has registered the same or a similar trade mark before you make your application. Read more about the benefits of trade mark registration.

Patent search

If you want to make, use, sell or import someone's invention or goods, you should carry out a full patent search and design search. You should also do a search if you're considering applying for your own patent. See how to get patent protection for your business and design right and registration.

Copyright search

If you want to use original creative work you should find out whether it is covered by copyright. Read about copyright for your business.

Infringing someone else's rights could be costly, so it is worth getting professional help from a trade mark or patent attorney if you find yourself in that situation.