Intellectual property is of great importance to many companies. In fact, at some public companies, intellectual property now accounts for as much as 70% of the value of business.1 Because intellectual property is an important source of value in companies in high-technology industries, managing intellectual property is an important part of technology strategy.
As a technology entrepreneur or manager, you need to understand the different legal mechanisms that you can use to protect your intellectual property, and you need to develop ways to employ those mechanisms to your advantage. This book focuses on the four ways that companies protect their intellectual property through legal means: patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks.
The first section discusses why companies need intellectual property protection. The second section identifies what is patentable. The third and fourth sections identify the parts of a patent and describe how to use a patent, respectively. The fifth section helps you to decide whether or not you should patent your inventions. The sixth, seventh, and eighth sections discuss secrecy, copyrights, and trademarks respectively.