The Traklight Blog

Most of us don't like to consider it, but risk is a fact of life. We take chances every day, some greater than others. None of us know what the future holds, and that can be a frightening thought. But consciously or not, we all find ways to try and mitigate that risk. We lock our cars and homes. We drive within a reasonable range of the speed limit. We exercise and visit the doctor to try to stave off illness. And yet none of these things can completely prevent us from falling victim to unfortunate circumstances Part of life is learning how to live with risk, and the same can be applied to the business world.

Intellectual property concerns and copyright law are big, important matters; we've preached that message in this space for years. Despite our messaging, that importance is often up to the interpretation of the reader; is it on par with getting insurance, or securing funding for your company? (Both important, by the way.) In many cases, it seems as though concerns over IP don't often rise to the level that they should, as potential issues to grind any company to a halt.

For many entrepreneurs, the prospect of starting their own business inspires a mix of both excitement and fear. Being a business owner offers the opportunity to be your own boss and make your dreams a reality. But it also offers the opportunity for mistakes and potentially failure for which you are ultimately responsible.

You can read the first part here.

For entrepreneurs and others involved with small businesses and startups, there is a lot of hard work that goes into trying to make the business a success. You spend long hours and untold effort into building a strong foundation for your company. Along the way, you undoubtedly make personal sacrifices to try and achieve your goals, missing out on time with friends and family to put the extra time in that will hopefully pay off in the long run. For founders and others who care deeply about the fortunes of the company, there is almost nothing within reason you wouldn’t do to make sure that your company’s future is secure.

In the long tradition of youthful cultural crazes, Fortnite is the latest entry in a pantheon of things that, like sounds at a particularly high frequency, are lost on those over a certain age. For those as yet unaware, Fortnite is an online mulitplayer battle-royale game that is currently consuming the free hours of young people he world over. In addition to being all-consuming for kids, it's highly profitable for its creator, Epic Games, who reportedly brought in $3 billion in profit last year.

Few things can become as iconic as a catchphrase in a popular movie, and few things are as certain as movie studios looking to cash in on the popularity of their films in any way possible, especially when that studio is the commercial and cultural behemoth that is Disney. One doesn't need to look far to see how they've established themselves at the forefront of our cultural consciousness and, crucially, quite near our wallets as well. And for the tremendous benefits that the company has accrued itself through its aggressive branding, it has made missteps in its quest towards cultural domination.

There's never a bad time to address and mitigate any of the potential risks that your business faces, but the new year is a particularly apt time for most people to reassess where their attentions and efforts have gone and where they should go in the coming months. It's a chance for all of us to do better and correct the mistakes of the past, and for businesses, it should provide an opportunity to gain a handle on that most vital part of any company's past, present and future: intellectual property.

The new year is an opportunity for a fresh start in our personal and professional lives. But many still fail to tackle the intellectual property issues that their business could potentially have to deal with, resolutions or not. While you should be managing your IP from its inception, it's better to start late than never; here are some tips on identifying and protecting your IP for 2019.

Dig hard enough, and you can find curious cases of copyright dispute around the world pertaining to things that you might never have guessed would be subject to a copyright claim. It seems that if there's a product or creation or invention worth protecting, people will take whatever steps necessary to try and protect it, even as it launches us into new and unexplored avenues of intellectual property that would seem more at place on the Food Network than in a courtroom.

For those who follow the news, the rise in dissent and argument in public discourse is inexorably linked to the growing split between two bodies, once united in a common goal but now more divided than they've ever been. Heated rhetoric flies back and forth between the two parties and their designated representatives, with lines drawn in the sand and allegiances publicly declared. Neutral onlookers and the nation as a whole are left to wonder if there is any way to save the union and the higher ideals it is meant to represent.

In what can be a cutthroat competitive landscape, small margins can have a big impact. It's small differences that can help to set one company ahead of another in the marketplace, and every business is striving to establish its own competitive edge. While most play within the rules (or at least keep their malfeasance from public view), we occasionally see the legal battling that happens when one business believes itself to be wronged by a competitor whom they accuse of stealing their work or ideas or knowledge to get ahead.

The advance of technology brings new problems that we are forced to grapple with. We're confronted with problems that we're ill-equipped to handle, because our society is forever trying to catch up to the last issue that upended some part of how we live or work or entertain ourselves.

Starting a business is a complicated process, and with any difficult and time-consuming effort, it is inevitable that a mistake or oversight can happen despite the best intentions. The long hours can leave you frazzled, and there simply aren't enough hours in the day to attend to every detail that you'd like.

Trying to be "cool" is ultimately a futile effort, because that effort in and of itself seemingly makes one "uncool". Doubly so for brands that are trying to chase trends rather than set them. In an attempt to sound like billion-dollar corporations are in fact run by chill 22-year-olds who "get it", you can end up coming across like a satirical meme. Nevertheless, companies try to chase the youth market by sounding like parents trying desperately to stay relevant by using the latest slang that has filtered through to them, perhaps because they haven't bothered to actually talk to any of the young people they're trying to sell to.

Companies get big by protecting their intellectual property (among other things), but what happens when they become huge? It can be hard to manage a massive international concern as it is, and trying to fend off a multitude of instances of infringement while handling all of the other daily corporate concerns can be like trying to play whack-a-mole while juggling. It's important to protect your brand and send a message to other scofflaws, but can it prove to be a case of exerting more resources than you're losing when weighing the cost of continued legal action?

The Vegas Golden Knights were the darlings of the National Hockey League (NHL) last season, getting all the way to the conference finals round of the playoffs in their first year of existence. The feel-good story of a brand new organization with a team of cast-off players getting almost within reach of the championship reads like something out of a movie, and generated breathless stories and burgeoning fans around the country. But the story nearly hit a bump when the team's trademark filings ran up against opposition from another organization with a claim to the name.

It's not hyperbole to say that the future of commerce and industry depends heavily on creativity. New products, methods and techniques allow businesses to adapt to a world that is ever changing, and the creative arts are what sustain and define us as a culture. We need creativity more than ever to face new challenges; at the same time that the safeguards for creative work are under greater strain to try and adapt to past changes in order to provide the necessary protections that make the act of creation a worthwhile enterprise for those with the requisite ambition.

There is a fine line as it relates to passion and nostalgia when it comes to properties owned by big corporations. Fan efforts to pay tribute and keep alive the things they love are fine, and probably even appreciated by those companies, until there is the loss of potential revenue involved. While big brands vary on how aggressive they are in pursuing legal action against what might be well-meaning enthusiasts, they tend to be very litigious when it comes to concerted efforts at what they see as exploitation of their intellectual property.

There is much made over automated programs that look to protect copyright online. They can be overly aggressive in what they consider to be infringement, and often lack the understanding and nuance of human arbiters when it comes to determinations between actual infringement and fair use and determining the original creators of work. This lack of actual cognition and comprehension can lead to cases of unfounded takedown requests or permitted infringement that escapes the notice of the programs designed to prevent that very problem.