03/06/2025
Founder PSA: did you know that a contract is a simple step towards protecting your IP?
When we talk about intellectual property (IP) protection, people most often think of “registrable” intellectual property, like trademarks, copyrights and patents. While safeguarding each of these forms of intellectual property is crucial for protecting your business, the conversation doesn’t stop there. When you think about IP protection, you should also be thinking about the more opaque intellectual property that permeates the day-to-day of your growing business: your proprietary information.
Proprietary information is sometimes referred to as “know-how”, and it’s the amalgamation of the practical knowledge, technical skills and trade secrets that make up your business. It includes things like internal project management and development processes, customer lists, manufacturing data, and all of the data, methods, information, and formulas that make your business unique.
Your proprietary information helps your business run and scale, and protecting it is just as important as protecting any other piece of your intellectual property. Unlike patents, copyrights and trademarks, however, proprietary information protection does not come through registration at the USPTO or Copyright Office; instead, you protect proprietary information through a series of contracts, often referred to as proprietary information and invention assignment agreements (or PIIAAs). Once your company has a form version of a PIIAA, you want to use it with anyone who has access to your company’s know-how: most commonly, your employees, board members, advisors, and independent contractors. By simply including the PIIAA in your hiring documents, advisor agreement packages, and contracts with service providers, you can take one big, simple step towards protecting your business’ IP.
