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Understand how to protect your ideas, document your work and establish your rights.
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Creating and updating records
Build a record of your work, its evolution and the people behind it.
How should I document the development of an idea, design or invention?
At which stages of a project should I create a dated record of my work?
What files and supporting information should I preserve alongside a timestamp certificate?
How can I document the contributions of employees, freelancers and research partners?
How can I create independently verifiable evidence of confidential work without making it public?
Are Git commits enough to document when software was developed?
Proving use and ownership
Connect your work, your rights and the evidence supporting them.
What evidence can help establish authorship and ownership beyond showing that a file existed?
How can a company document its rights to work created by employees and contractors?
What evidence should I collect to document the commercial use of a trademark?
What records help demonstrate that a company treated particular information as a trade secret?
What is freedom to operate, and how does prior use affect it?
Preparing for due diligence
Organise the evidence that partners, investors and advisers need.
How can I identify the exact software, designs or know-how being reviewed in due diligence?
Can I build useful IP evidence now for work developed in the past?
How can a licence or transfer agreement identify the exact files, designs or know-how it covers?
What evidence helps a lender or valuer assess an unregistered IP asset?
Preparing for and dealing with a dispute
Preserve records that others can examine and independently verify.
How do I identify exactly which parts of my work or know-how are at issue in an IP dispute?
How can I show independent development when accused of copying or misuse?
What should change in how I handle evidence once an IP dispute becomes likely?
How can I use confidential know-how as evidence in a dispute without making it public?
What evidence helps establish the financial harm caused by copying or misuse?
Core concepts
Understand the mechanisms behind digital evidence, verification and confidentiality.
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