{"id":231402,"date":"2022-07-15T01:56:22","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T23:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/?p=118385"},"modified":"2022-07-15T01:56:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T23:56:22","slug":"escrow-the-unsung-hero-of-ip-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/escrow-the-unsung-hero-of-ip-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Escrow \u2013 the unsung hero of IP protection"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1 \">\n<aside id=\"republication_tracker_tool-2\" class=\"republication_tracker_tool clearfix\">\n<h5 class=\"adtitle\">Republish for Free<\/h5>\n<div class=\"license\">\n<p><button name=\"Republish This Story\" id=\"cc-btn\" class=\"republication-tracker-tool-button\">Republish This Story<\/button><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"license\" rel=\"noreferrer license noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" class=\"lazyload\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/escrow-the-unsung-hero-of-ip-protection.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/escrow-the-unsung-hero-of-ip-protection.png\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"message\">\n<p>Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Entrepreneurs are often advised by friends and family to protect their intellectual property (IP) as soon as they can during the start-up stage of their businesses, preferably before taking their new products or service to market.<\/p>\n<p>And often, they are directed to one of four types of IP protection \u2013 copyrighting, patenting, design registration or trademarking.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, established businesses and large corporates make use of the same four types of IP protection. Just think how often you see the symbols designating these and other types of protection alongside brand names and on products \u2013 \u00a9, \u00ae and \u2122.<\/p>\n<p>But, entrepreneur, established business, big corporate alike, they are all ignoring another simple, yet highly-effective means of protecting IP \u2013 active escrow.<\/p>\n<p>According to Escrow Europe CEO, Andrew Stekhoven, IP protection through copyrighting, patenting, design registration or trademarking is often dependent on the country the IP originator and the IP challenger are domicile or nationalised.<\/p>\n<p>He claims IP escrow is the unsung hero of IP protection as it is irrefutable proof of your copyrights on an international basis \u2013 because it shifts the burden of proof in the event of a hostile ownership challenge.<\/p>\n<p>IP escrow is the safekeeping \u2013 vaulting and verification \u2013 of your IP by an independent and neutral escrow specialist. It is the gold standard, he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCostly formal registration procedures are not necessary to secure your copyright or copyrights,\u201d Stekhoven says. \u201cThe author of a product, or their employer, automatically secures this right provided the \u2018work\u2019 meets certain legal criteria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, if someone infringes the copyright of your product, you must be able to demonstrate that you are entitled to such rights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously, you can document the product development internally. That, though, requires very high levels of effort and time for this to become anywhere near \u2018bulletproof\u2019. In addition, internal documentation by definition is disputable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIP escrow verification, on the other hand, offers indisputable proof of your copyright. A unique fingerprint of your product is made, and timestamped with every escrow deposit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom this, you can be provided with a Certificate of Deposit and Registration, which is internationally recognised in most jurisdictions, confirming the necessary details. Finally, the IP material in secured vaults, to be retrieved and matched with the fingerprint whenever necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Stekhoven, by depositing IP \u2013 including IP such as software source code and databases \u2013 with a company like Escrow Europe, you are not only documenting your copyrights, but protecting the integrity of your company\u2019s know-how.<\/p>\n<p>It further discourages copyright infringement by employees (current and former) and freelancers. And should you, as part of a co-operative partnership be obliged to offer your partners access to sensitive company information, you can prevent abuse of this access from going unpunished at a later time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast but not least, should you ever want to sell your company,\u201d he says, \u201cit probably will be vital to the prospective buyer that you can prove or at least document the ownership of the IP rights. It\u2019s a cinch with IP escrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A summary of the benefits provided by IP escrow include:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Proof of ownership\/copyright \u2013 It provides a sound and demonstrable audit trail that can be presented to a court as evidence that you created the product when you said you did.<br \/>\u2022 Back up of know-how \u2013 Know-how, probably the most precious asset of your company, is regularly stored. If employees leave your employment, their \u2018works\u2019 remain accessible to you.<br \/>\u2022 Discourages infringement \u2013 copyright registration works preventatively, in particular with regards to employees, both current and former.<br \/>\u2022 Risk limitation joint ventures\/cooperative agreements \u2013 in setting up JVCs or cooperative agreements one often has to exchange very confidential proprietary information. Prior registration prevents misuse at a later stage.<br \/>\u2022 Integrity of copyright in case of freelance workers \u2013 to acquire copyright on the work of freelancers who do work on your projects, you need a written statement from them that they transfer their copyright to you. By registration of their output, you close the loop; they cannot claim rights (partial or otherwise) at a later stage.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mypr.co.za\/contact\/featured\/\">CLICK HERE to submit your press release to MyPR.co.za<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <span class=\"post-views-icon dashicons dashicons-chart-bar\"><\/span> <span class=\"post-views-label\">Press Release Views:<\/span> <span class=\"post-views-count\">102<\/span> <\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-pagination pagination\">Pages: <span class=\"post-page-numbers current\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Page <\/span>1<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/escrow-the-unsung-hero-of-ip-protection\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Page <\/span>2<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\">Source: MyPR.co.za<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republish for Free Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Entrepreneurs are often advised by friends and family to protect their intellectual property (IP) as soon as they can during the start-up stage of their businesses, preferably before taking their new products or service to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":231403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9021,1],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-231402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mypr","8":"category-south-africa","9":"tag-mypr","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/escrow-the-unsung-hero-of-ip-protection.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}