The alleged theft of intellectual property (IP) by large corporates has appeared in the news with increasing frequency. Remember Woolworths with Ubuntu Baba and Sexy Socks. This article explores how you can protect your IP and ensure you get your just rewards.
An article in IT Web tells the story of two Gugulethu-based software engineers Thandile Jwambi and Nicolas Kutumane who accuse Nedbank of stealing their card-blocking invention.
This sounds like Version 2.0 of the much publicised Please Call Me saga where Nkosana Makate is claiming R10 billion from Vodacom for allegedly stealing his IP.
“After finding out Nedbank was using their invention or something similar based on the Gugulethu entrepreneurs’ invention information that they supplied to the bank, they wrote to Nedbank CEO Mike Brown, but were rebuffed,” says representatives. They issued a new High Court summons against Nedbank for allegedly stealing their invention.
In the article, a specialist IP lawyer is quoted as saying, “If you come up with a brilliant new invention, but do not register the patent, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it if someone else copies your idea and markets it themselves.”
That may be what the corporates and their attorneys would like small entrepreneurs to believe, but it’s not entirely true.
The Truth About How You Can Protect Your IP
IP Escrow provides for the deposit of the Intellectual Property with a neutral and independent trusted third party.
With respect to patent, trade secret and copyright preservation, the IP deposited in escrow, represents a unique time and date stamped ‘snapshot’ of the product, whether design details, blue prints or source code for software. This serves as an historical artifact, stored in secured vaults, and retrievable whenever it may be necessary to provide indisputable proof of your Intellectual Property ownership rights.
Protect Your IP with EscrowSURE
If you have a great idea that you’d like to sell to the corporate world, avoid the heartache of IP theft and significant expense of registering a patent – please call ESCROWSURE (021-852 9365) for advice on how we can help protect you and your ideas.
