A guide to protecting your intellectual property

1. A guide to protecting intellectual
property during production

2. International Intellectual Property
• The benefits of sourcing in China are amazing: large
economies of scale, cheap but increasingly sophisticated
labour, and a strong infrastructure among others.
• But if you’re really going to exploit the benefits, you quickly
need to get acquainted with the country’s intellectual
property (IP) customs and practices.
• In the UK and Europe, ensuring your IP during production is
fairly straightforward. But when you manufacture overseas,
you run the very real risk of your product appearing on the
market with somebody else’s logo on it!

3. Tips to protect IP overseas
• Register your trademark in the country of manufacture asap.
• Be discreet. To minimalise the threat of someone walking off
with your ideas keep things on a need-to-know basis.
• Never rely on verbal agreements or promises. Get everything
in writing and make your contracts watertight.
• Know the law – It’s in your interests to know how the legal
system operates in the country you intend to manufacture in.

4. Take the right steps
Yes, there are genuine risks associated with preserving
intellectual property IP when manufacturing in China; the
more valuable your IP is, and the easier it is to copy, the more
likely it is that it will be copied. But don’t let that deter you…
By taking the right precautionary measures – and getting in
early with your trademark applications – you can secure your
IP and get production started. Going through the right
channels takes a little bit of time, and there are associated
costs, but believe me, they’re nothing compared to the cost of
losing your rights to a product you may very well have spent
years developing.

5. For more tips, visit:
www.GlobalSourceSupply.com