Companies are increasingly competitive, which is why protecting their intangible assets as part of their assets is essential.
To this effect, intellectual property is the tool that helps business owners protect their trade secrets, internally managing knowledge, and prevent leaks on the sensitive and strategic information on the business.
‘How to protect your company’s KNOW HOW?‘ This has been one of the main matters of the session held in the ABC club in Barranquilla (Colombia), organized by APD Colombia, the Association for Management Progress, which contributes to business social structure development through networking and specialized information.
During the session, PONS IP general manager, Nuria Marcos, gave a talk with the aim of analyzing and explaining the best strategies to face knowledge loss resulting from employee retirement or severance, and establishing a series of effective security actions to protect the business environment innovation.
Nuria Marcos said that ‘Intellectual property is fundamental to accomplish intangible asset protection in a company for it is a set of rights that provide an exclusive use and exploitation entitlement, such as trademarking or invention patent. However, when the subject is excluded from patentability, which makes it difficult to spot infringements and/or pursue legal action, the solution should be the trade secret’.
Trade secrets are not subject to registration, and their protection depends on the reasonable actions taken by the owner to ensure that the collected facts are enough to appear before a judge to prove an employee revealed the secret.
Finally, with the aim of accomplishing the business Know How protection, our general manager has recommended the organizations to ‘conduct audits of the current situation, as well as legally and technically regulate the situation with the current employees. On the other hand, for new hires, the legal connection to the intellectual property they bring from their former employers must be analyzed and, naturally, an IP protocol, which considers trade secrets and proper legal business and technology actions, must be implemented’.
