Protecting What’s Yours: A Guide to IP Protection for Entrepreneurs and Innovators

Intellectual property (IP) protection plays a pivotal role in encouraging creativity, safeguarding assets, and boosting long-term growth for small businesses and startups. But what does it mean to truly protect your IP, and how does it encourage innovation?

This month, Marcus DiBuduo, a Fennemore director of intellectual property, shared his experience helping businesses and offering advice to startup entrepreneurs who wish to protect their IPs:

How does strong IP protection encourage innovation among startups and small businesses?

To start, let’s define what it means when IP is “protected.” It means the owner has acquired enough legal tools to prevent third parties from copying their ideas. This could be a patent for a new invention, a trademark for a unique logo or brand name, a copyright for artistic creations, or a trade secret for confidential information.

Effective IP protection doesn’t just prevent direct copying. It ensures that no one can alter your idea just enough to make it seem different while retaining its essence. A skilled IP attorney works to secure the broadest coverage for your ideas, ensuring you’re fully protected.

However, simply having the legal tool to prevent copying isn’t enough. The legal and policy framework needs to make it easy for business owners to enforce their rights. For example, having a portfolio of patents that are difficult to enforce due to prohibitive legal costs doesn’t help an entrepreneur. Likewise, the value of trademarks is weakened when online marketplaces make it tough to have counterfeit or infringing goods quickly removed from their platform.

The right balance between strong protection and easy enforcement fosters innovation. Entrepreneurs who put new products on the market will certainly face copiers and imitators, but the threat of legal action encourages competitors to invest time and money innovating their own product rather than taking the easy route of copying another’s.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see when companies try to protect their IP, and how can they avoid them?

Entrepreneurs often believe their work is done once they’ve secured a patent or trademark. However, IP protection is not a one-time task; maintaining IP protection is an ongoing process.

As businesses grow and products or services change, it’s essential to periodically reassess their IP protection to ensure it still covers the new direction of the company.

Many entrepreneurs, eager to save on legal fees, try DIY IP protection. While this might seem cost-effective, the results can be mixed. At worst, their protection may be illusory and unsalvageable. For those in the “bootstrap” stage, they might consider working with a legal professional on a consultation basis—paying for one or more brief consultations to ensure that their DIY efforts align with best practices. Legal fees are, of course, not insignificant. But there are countless stories of companies with innovative products or services that were unable to thwart competition by not obtaining competent IP advice at an early stage.

With generative AI, biotech, and green tech on the rise, among other emerging industries, what new IP challenges are emerging in these industries?

As technology evolves, new industries such as generative AI, biotech, and green tech present fresh challenges for IP protection. Nearly 75 years ago, scientist Alan Turing invented a game, the Turing Test, which proposed to answer the question “can machines think?” Fast forward to today, the use of artificial “intelligence” is on a dramatic rise. In the case of generative AI, for example, the question arises: Who owns the intellectual property when AI generates creative works? Is it the person who provided the prompts, the AI itself, or a combination of both?

The law continues to adapt to these questions, and innovators must stay informed about how emerging technologies might affect their IP rights.

How does your team at Fennemore help businesses align their IP strategies with long-term goals for growth and sustainability?

At Fennemore, we tailor our IP strategy to each client’s unique preferences—whether they prefer a hands‑off approach or close involvement. We provide the right level of support at every stage and adjust our approach as their needs evolve, keeping their intellectual property aligned with long‑term growth and sustainability goals.