eCentral Business Show^©

How to protect your intellectual property as a start up with Brent Weston

Wed 7:00am 01 Nov 2017
Podcast Audio


With the evolution of start - up culture there is the ever present threat that ideas will be stolen or copied. Along with that there is the need for start ups to consider trademarks and IP that should be registered.

In this interview with Brent Weston, we talk about the nature of IP in the start up space and the fundamentals of protecting it.

Video transcript:
how do you protect your intellectual property the startup is what we're talking about today on the east central business show arm John Taylor joined by Brent West and specialist an intellectual property law thank you very much brain for talking this ongoing ongoing yeah a pleasure to be here yeah look it's all exactly the same but it's exactly the same day actually but no it's great to have a talk to you about this sir and that's why I asked you off-camera if we continue this conversation because a lot of people out there that are entrepreneurs they want to disrupt they've got this great app idea they want to launch their you know they've got this idea that they're gonna be Watts Apple and they're gonna sell what do you want to sell yourself to Facebook or to Google that's the choices really isn't it but let's talk about the various things that the startups do around protecting intellectual property and one of the sorts of conversations and things they need to concern themselves with you can tell us something about that yeah my advice to people with great ideas there's plenty of people out there with great ideas yeah is get some specialist advice as early as you possibly can I mean you can you can type in intellectual property in Google some of the information is good some of its misleading some of it's just wrong board to get specialist advice as early as possible oh well there's nothing it's like any Google result these days on any subject gives you a million results so how do you cure at that how do you well that's right and he distill that down to something useful you need to talk to a professional yeah I think so I look at my experience most creative people inventors and ideas people are pretty switched on anyway and they've got a pretty pretty good sense of what they're what they're creating and and whether or not it has value hmm and whether or not it there might be some legal rights attaching to it I think it's very important to get upfront advice a let's identify it the first concept is identify what what my idea is giving effect to what law isn't giving rise to an IP right and if so what kind following that do I need to think about protecting it hmm so identify it inform yourself as to what it is that you may have on your hands yeah then you can start thinking about your budget hmm you hope you can start thinking about whether you might want to attract third-party investors yeah sure and there are funds out there that exist to develop intellectual property and to protect it from the take it to market and there are various phases of investment fund raising but excuse me Bret I've got to cut in like this dumb it down you know like really like step one go ahead until the world or keep it a secret keep it a secret no right okay now if they're going to call themselves what's Apple do they need to protect that as a training yeah well that's right so if we're talking about apps generally no as an example that's all going hand in hand because as I stated in some earlier parts in this video oh I play I pay your product your idea might actually comprise a range of overlapping IP rights hmm so you know there's a source code shall we say within the app and so that's right said the source code and that should be a trade secret Betty so keep that secret yep some instances the if it gives rise to some sort of inventive or novel way of doing things that might be patentable yeah where people bump the phone together or something like that and that makes right or for next a unicorn appearance that I don't know yeah if it's if it does something that knew you that he's new that nobody else has done before yeah it's potentially patentable but that need specialist advice yeah okay I bet that part as I saw this in the software's secret the system the way it works get it there's something you get a patent of it potentially as patentable potential yeah generally there's the brand you mentioned snow the bread trade are we at a market this what are we going to call it if you're thinking about a brand it's good to have a bit of a bit of a look around as to whether what you're thinking of using has already been used by somebody else know if you've got a trademark or a brand in mind that might be capable of trademark protection yeah so that sort of gets you to the identification and protection part but in my experience ideas people aren't necessarily made of money so if you've got an idea that's reasonably well developed it's probably time to start thinking about attracting some some investment funding the initial funding usually comes from friends family and fools right get things going okay but at some point it's likely you'll need capital money to to take it to the next level we haven't made proper development proper protection and getting it to market with all the relevant branding yeah but many ways many structures to do it but these are the initial thoughts that you should be thinking about if you've got an idea all right so when do they come and see you they've they've got an idea it's still secret is important yeah so they've told the world is probably a bit too late or they still want the conversation but it's where they put the horse before the cart say it so early on in the piece as early as possible I think just to get some general guides I mean I I've certainly dealt with people over the last many years that have have have come up with the idea and perhaps they've spilled the beans or they've taken it to places they shouldn't have and then they seek the advice and it's a bit hard to undo what's been done no of course there are some other issues to think about as well that's IP generally but there are structuring issues so there are ways to protect IP if I have a patent over your IP hmm but to remove it from any kind of commercial or credit risk there are ways to structure your business so without a white board yeah you have to visualize it yeah what we commonly do when it comes to IP structure is we put the IP asset which has value we had put it in a separate company over here that's on the IP holding company okay it gives the trading company over here the right to to use that the intellectual property right and over here we have John the customer but we have the IPS in a long way removed from the customer and any potential commercial or credit risk oh okay so simple getting those simple structures in place is important to do early as well okay or artist structure alright well anyway look what it comes down to it they probably contact your LinkedIn I take it on LinkedIn yeah and that's Western W est au n Brent Western and had that conversation early on and call you up make contact and come in for a consult yeah by contact my contact come in for a coffee and a chinwag early on as early as early as possible yeah it's important to get some general guidance as early as possible and at least then you're in a position to decide where you want to take it and also of course how much you want to invest in the process sure sure sure in terms of deciding how high you want to take it you need to have a broader understanding of the market you're pitching out as well the marketing potential of the product so that there's a there's a there's that initial legal advice but there might be a requirement to obtain some financial accounting advice as well yeah in terms of getting a business structure your tax structures set up any by in fact all also want to take on boards and some specialist marketing advice as well yeah understanding the market me how to fix the product fantastic Brent thank you very much for coming in I think a very important about all this sort of thing I keep coming up with the answer and every time I speak to you is you got to get in a talk to you early or that's the takeaway of this process Brett Weston thank you very much for coming in thank you John thank you very much okay and that's another episode of the ecentral business show.