BELLINNOVO IP

Your company cannot protect an idea; you can only protect an implementation of an idea. Whether it’s an invention, a brand or trade name, or a work of authorship, your IP is entitled to different protections, or a combination of several.

BELLINNOVO can help with applicable patent, trademark, or copyright protections—or a combination of them all—as the scope of the IP warrants. Trade secret protection is incompatible with patent protection, so it requires a detailed discussion with the appropriate business stakeholders.

For example, your new software algorithm may represent an innovation in computing heuristics, but your brand name and your source code are at least as valuable to the company as is the functionality of the algorithm. One form of protection won’t be enough to cover all of those bases. Maybe you want to lock the source code up in a vault and keep it as a trade secret forever . . . or at least until the algorithm is obsolete. That decision will affect the strategy for pursuing patent protection, and maybe copyright protection as well, but the branding and trademark decisions may not be influenced much, if at all.

BELLINNOVO knows how to tease out the nuances and make a plan for the big picture. Your patent application should be filed before you launch your commercial version, but you have to be using the trade name in commerce before you’re even entitled to trademark protection. Getting the dates mixed up can lead to hassles down the road, or even preclude patent protection in some instances. Sometimes it’s better to measure twice and cut once . . . .