What are the most important IP protections for tech startups?
Text Transcript
Travis Stegemoller, Trademark Attorney: Some of the more important IP protections for a tech startup really depends on the nature of the business. So if you’re software-based or mobile applications based, you certainly can consider a patent, but a lot of times the applications are really iterations on either open source code or variations on other pieces of code that came from another business. And so in that point you really want to consider the copyright.
But it’s more likely that when you’re dealing with an application, you’re going to have a lot of different people working on that application, and so you’re going to want to take steps to protect it as a trade secret. And that also gives you the benefit of a longer length of protection because trade secrets last as long as the content of the trade secret remains a secret, whereas patents have a shorter life of approximately 20 years and copyrights can terminate after 75 years upon the author’s death.