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Aleck Ncube, Intellectual Property
WHEN it comes to your company’s intellectual property (IP), you can never play it too safe. Enforcing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) is a good first step toward protecting your business, but these documents may not cover everything. Sometimes you have to think outside the box to attain an optimum level of protection for proprietary data of your business’.
1. Restricted data access
To protect your intellectual property, SMEs must restrict access to it. For one, not all of SMEs employees need full access to the complete product in order to work on it. By restricting their access to the full product, you can better protect it. Also, SMEs must be sure to store all important files and documents in a secure location with not just a simple password, but adaptive authentication.
2. Education about your company policies
SMEs need to ensure that employees across all levels of their company understand company policy, especially when it comes to confidentiality. They need to understand the various levels of IP protection. In regulated industries like healthcare, people are usually more disciplined, but for less-regulated industries, education and policy is the only way to avoid loss and leakage of IP.
3. Contractual language and protective controls
Beyond non-disclosure agreements, there needs to be contractual language that specifically addresses intellectual property use and ownership. This should be clearly stated and agreed upon by all parties. In addition, technological controls must be placed on the intellectual property itself to protect it from being accessed, modified, used or transferred in accordance with the agreements.
4. Pre-vetted messages for discussing protected topics
A lot of unintentional disclosure happens because someone is struggling to convey a message and can’t think of a better way to say it. SMEs must prepare vetted content that allows employees to talk about important topics, both publicly and with partners and market vendors, without giving away secrets. Make sure employees understand why approved phrases work and listen to their feedback when more is needed.
5. Better physical and digital security tools
SMEs must be aware of the tools available to them to protect their confidential data. That means doing something as simple as installing hard locks on doors where your IP is kept or installing strongly encrypted firewalls to protect your digital data, along with facial/fingerprint scanning for access to such IP data. Keeping track of the tools available and the people who access it is important.
6. A holistic approach to data ownership
It is important for SMEs to understand that agreements, awareness training and technology work in concert to create an overall environment of data protection and confidentiality. People are more likely to protect data if they own it, understand its value and importance and see how it applies to them. Technology such as well-implemented data loss prevention strategy acts to validate and ensure that an SME IP is safe.
7. Pursuing legal action when necessary
SMEs must understand that having an employee agreement and IP/patent strategy are worthless unless they are willing to back it up when challenged. If a third party infringes on a patent or steals IP and the SME does not pursue litigation, it will be sending the market a message that those assets are fair game.
8. Non-communication
The best advice one could receive in terms of IP protection is that unless it is a question of life or death, SMEs must never communicate anything that they really think is core to their business differentiation in terms of implementation. Just discuss the outcome, not the way to get there.
9. Accessing the right tools for handling data
SMEs must always keep in mind that their IP protection is all about providing employees with the right tools to handle data in an obvious, easy and natural way that is also secure and safe. At the end of the day employees want to do the right thing — give them the tools to easily do it.
10. Strong vendor vetting
It is extremely important that business leaders assess the different ways they can be exploited for intellectual property. One of the easiest things to overlook is your market vendors. The easiest, strongest advice is to make sure your market vendors operate legally in a jurisdiction where they would be legally liable for IP wrongdoings.
11. Deeper knowledge of the IP creation structure
Usually SMEs think a NDA is thought to be the most important document, but in many cases, the IP is created in a complex scheme in which subcontractors, contractors, temporary workers, local and overseas — are involved. It is strongly recommend that SMEs study and follow this structure in full and ensure you cover IP creation properly with each individual contributor (preferably with explicit IP transfer agreements).
λ Aleck Ncube is an intellectual property scholar based in Bulawayo. He can be contacted on Mobile: +263712374408 Skype: Matintas1 Twitter: @aleckncube Alternative e-mail: [email protected]
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