Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are all at risk of infringement. Intellectual property insurance helps companies cover the costs associated with litigation in enforcing or defending your intellectual property against such infringement.
What is Intellectual Property?
As a reminder, intellectual property is described as something created by human creativity. This could be a symbol, phrase, or design that represents the work that you provide. It could also be a product that you have invented, a process that you came up with, or a work such as art or a song. To learn more about the types of intellectual property see our other posts that describe each in detail.
- Trademarks
- Patents
- Copyrights
- Trade Secrets
Unfortunately, there are others who would infringe on your IP. To protect yourself and your IP from the cost of an infringement lawsuit, there is insurance available that provides coverage to help in these situations. IPISC offers policies for either situation and helps protect you and your intellectual property.
Enforcement Insurance
Enforcement insurance (formerly called the Abatement policy) is a unique plaintiff’s policy that reimburses your litigation expenses when you need to enforce your IP against alleged infringers, as well as reimburses your costs due to any invalidity counter-lawsuits filed against your IP. This type of policy is available to any company with:
- issued patents,
- patent application or provisional application
- registered trademarks
- trademark applications
- common law trademarks
- trade dress
- registered or unregistered copyrights (must be registered before asserting)
When you have an enforcement policy, there are many benefits to carrying this type of policy. An enforcement policy is a great deterrent to your competitors infringing on your IP. It also reduces the pressure to settle too early, which happens when a company is paying for the litigation on its own. Carrying an enforcement policy provides relief to the worry of infringement and lets you move forward with innovation.
Defense Insurance
Defense insurance covers litigation expenses associated with your company defending itself against a claim of infringement on another’s intellectual property rights. Having a patent, trademark, or copyright does not protect you from an outside source suing you. In this case, you deserve to defend your IP, and it can become costly
Having a defense policy protects you from losing market share because you are experiencing a cash drain due to protecting your IP. This can help you move forward without the worry of a troll taking down your business.
Why is Intellectual Property Important?
Intellectual property infringement cases have been on the rise and are costly. These cases can cost millions of dollars. Without the coverage provided by intellectual property insurance the burden of these costs fall upon you. With the high cost of these cases, it has cost others to burn through the capital planned for further innovation. Carrying an insurance policy on your intellectual property protects you for further innovation with peace of mind.
Protecting Your IP is Important
You have worked hard to design your product or process, establish your brand identity, or bring your creative work to life; it would be a miss if you didn’t do everything possible to protect it. We have been in the industry of protecting IP for many years and be a part of helping many businesses protect their assets. Click here to talk to us about insuring your intellectual property.
