Imagine you’ve come up with a brilliant idea that will take the world by storm. Just by talking about it, though, might give someone the opportunity to claim it as their own. You might be asking yourself, ‘How can I protect my idea?’. Fortunately there are some legal provisions that you can use to do so. First of all you need to know that only a physical manifestation of your idea can be protected – such as a device, technical innovation, literary or musical artwork, model or logo, for example.
The protection of intellectual property, as this is known, can be achieved by using patents, trademarks or copyrights to assert that it is your work and cannot be used by others without due recognition or recompense to you. The method you use will depend on your idea: patents for inventions and physical items, copyright for artistic works in various media or trademarks which protect a name, logo or other means of identifying a brand of product or service.