Protecting our Intellectual Property

There are four methods available to protect our intellectual property; Trademarks, Trade Secrets, Copyrights, and Patents. Given that the company that I would like to develop is primarily a service industry the methods that I have to protect my intellectual property are somewhat limited. Copyrights and Trade Secrets are somewhat harder to apply to my company. The most obvious choice would be to Trademark the name of my company which would be my first move. Copyright laws require that I have an work that I have exclusive rights to and while that may be possible it would be harder in the beginning. Given that my company will eventually move towards developing technology specifically aimed at making our service easier I will then move to patent that technology and its use in our application. The gaming table/tablet that we will develop and build our café around is where our intellectual property will be most at risk and it is this that we will seek to develop patents or copyright claims for, whichever becomes more applicable. Because it is a public service domain developing a trade secret is near impossible unless we become a food provider as well and develop our own specific method for making our consumables. The table and our methods for game storage and communication across platforms is where the IP is vulnerable, however it is also a tricky measure to say that our methods are entirely unique. The biggest too in our shed at launch will be the Trademark of our brand name and from there we will have to move on to the other methods of protection as those parts of our industry are developed.