A key to differentiating a business is having an offering or a way of doing business that is unique to you, so you stand out from your competitors. 

Your differentiating proposition effectively says to consumers that buying from...

Nowadays there is increasing awareness about the value of “intellectual property” and brands. Yet “intellectual property” is a term that alienates many people because they don’t understand what it means or how it applies to th...

Some entrepreneurs regard Intellectual Property Rights as irrelevant to what they are aiming to achieve, while others are overly mindful of IP rights, even to the point of treating them as an end in themselves.

Acquiring rights th...

What do people actually understand about Intellectual Property? Most people’s knowledge of IP law often comes from high profile cases featuring disputes between household names.

You might have read about Dyson’s dispute with ...

In any business there will be rules that management and staff need to follow. Some will be more important than others. For example, to safeguard a company’s intellectual property rights, there are a couple of useful procedures tha...

In this second blog post for ambitious start-ups during global entrepreneurship week, I focus on names, copyright and designs, as well as know how.

In this guide for start-ups, I focus on names, copyright and designs, as wel...

Intellectual property (IP) law will be relevant to every one of these businesses.  Yet MBA courses, books for start-ups, and entrepreneurship groups neglect IP law to a shocking extent.

Start-up publications and MBA courses ...

As an IP lawyer, I am well aware of how little intellectual property is understood in entrepreneurship circles. Even MBA courses barely address the topic. Yet the digital economy has many implications on the relevance of Intellect...

Every business will have intellectual property to protect, although the actions to take will be very different depending on the business and the intellectual property involved.

Say you’ve invented some innovative way to solv...

When you’re starting any new venture it’s a good idea to ask yourself some searching questions. Why are you in business? Or why are you planning to start one? What’s the motivation driving it? Are you aiming to make it big? Wou...

One of the most serious problems with IP is that there are so many myths, and so much misinformation around it. The subject is not easy for people to understand, therefore, because they will be fed wrong information, sometime

I was speaking to a designer recently who said that people find IP rights very frightening.

That intrigued me. Why fear IP? Is it that you fear what you don’t understand? Is it that IP is a nuisance perhaps?

Whatever the rea...