Protecting Your IPR

Filing for intellectual property rights in the form of patents or trademarks entitles a person or a company to use all legal means defined by law in case of infringements. However, these rights do not “protect” the content of intellectual assets. It is highly recommended to combine IP rights with protection mechanisms that ensure that crucial information cannot be retrieved easily from disloyal employees or criminal outsiders. In some cases, protection measures can be more effective than a patent, e.g. where the product life cycle is much shorter than the time needed for a patent registration. For products with short life cycles, filing for a utility model may be more useful than a patent as the examination period is much shorter.