Intellectual property --- patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks --- is extremely valuable to businesses in today¡¦s global economy and should be foremost in many businesses¡¦ planning. But many attorneys do not understand how and why their clients should obtain intellectual property protection.
To maximize their return on investment, businesses need to take a strategic view of their intellectual property. The decision to protect an invention needs to take into consideration what type of protection is most effective, how the invention fits into a business¡¦ overall strategic plans, the market life of the invention and whether other inventions under development are better candidates for protection. Attorneys also need to anticipate, and develop strategies for, the inevitable law suits that are a reality of conducting a business. This may require regular searches of patent and trademark records and designing around patents whose owners use law suits as a means of
