Intellectual property preparations can be important when starting a side business

On behalf of Kaufhold & Dix Patent Law posted in Patent Law on Wednesday, October 11, 2017.

Starting a new business doesn’t always involve immediately throwing off one’s old job and bringing up the business to full-scale right away. Some aspiring entrepreneurs opt to start things off on a smaller scale. For example, some keep their current job and start a business on the side.

Being such a “moonlighting entrepreneur” can take up a lot of a person’s time and energy. Balancing a full-time job and the running of a new business can put a lot of demands on a person. In the midst of dealing with all these demands, there are certain things it can be important for a moonlighting entrepreneur to not forget to give appropriate attention. A recent Entrepreneur article went over some of these things.

One of these is preparing one’s business for the future. A moonlighting entrepreneur may be tempted to put off such preparations, thinking that they might not really need to be addressed until the business gets larger in scale. However, putting off such preparations can carry risks. It could leave a person’s business ill-suited to make the transition when the time comes for it to shift from being a side business to a full-time business. Also, it could cause a person to miss opportunities for protecting their new company’s future interests and their goal’s for their company’s future.

Among the preparations that can be important ones for a moonlighting entrepreneur is making sure their side business’ intellectual property is properly protected. This includes inventions that a business owner feels will be important to their company’s current or future operations. Not having appropriate protections for their intellectual property could create a lot of problems for a moonlighting entrepreneur down the line.

When it comes to protecting inventions, patents can be an option. So, applying for a patent is among the intellectual property protection steps that a person might take as they are getting a side business started. Now, the rules and process related to patents can have many complexities. How these complexities are dealt can have some major ramifications. For one, it could impact how likely a given patent application is to be approved. Also, it could impact how strong of protections the requested patent, if granted, would ultimately give. So, when a “moonlighting entrepreneur” is applying for a patent, they may want a skilled patent lawyer’s help with handling the various complex aspects of the patent process.