Chapter 20. Internal Processes for Greater Protection: Audits and Infringement Policies

The first step in protecting intellectual property is to understand what intellectual property assets your company owns. Once you know what assets exist, you can protect them through trademark registration, copyright registration, patent registration, or trade secret protection. To determine what intellectual property assets exist, most companies conduct audits or inventories, which disclose the valuable and proprietary information owned by the company.

Although most of this book has been devoted to steps that can be taken to protect and preserve your company's or department's intellectual property rights, it is equally important to consider the affirmative steps a company can take to avoid infringement of others' rights.