Protecting intellectual property often hard
For small businesses: Many don't know the value of their ideas or how much is lost to unfair copying
By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune
Most small-business owners probably figure they have enough on their plates growing a business without worrying about something as esoteric as intellectual property theft.
Let global giants such as Nike and Microsoft stew over international piracy, right?
U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Jon Dudas begs to differ. About half the patents issued in Utah - 683 last year alone - went to small-business owners. And those ideas - the foundations of dozens of businesses - are at risk of theft.
"We've found that small businesses don't understand intellectual property," said Dudas. "One tremendously bad case of intellectual property theft and they could lose their business."
Intellectual property includes everything a sharp entrepreneur could dream up - from software programs, which can be copied on a massive scale and transmitted in seconds over the Internet, to knock-off motor boat gauges or a hot-selling brand of glue churned out of a Far East factory.
Because trademark and patent theft has become a $600 billion problem - pirates siphon off about 5 percent to 10 percent of the value of U.S.-trademarked products - Dudas has kicked off a nationwide series of seminars for small businesses. The first started Monday in Salt Lake City and will continue today at Little America Hotel.
Full story.
Sponsor: Gehrke & Associates, SC -- Intellectual Property and Technology Law
