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BookNook
 Protecting Your
Company’s Intellectual Property: A Practical
Guide to Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents & Trade
Secrets
by Deborah E. Bouchoux
AMACOM, 2001.
ISBN: 0-8144-0601-7.
Hardcover, 262 pages. Price: $29.95
Overall Rating: * * * * * Pick It Up Today
Do you know the differences between the four types
of intellectual property? Do you understand the
procedure for obtaining copyright protection and what
actions are violations of a copyright belonging to
someone else? Should you retain a lawyer to explore
the possibility of patenting your company’s
latest invention?
If you are not sure about the answers to these
questions, this month’s book is for you.
Written by an attorney specializing in intellectual
property, this is a highly readable and exceptionally
interesting book. It should be read and in the
library of anyone responsible for creating or
protecting intellectual property or anyone concerned
with preventing violations.
After introducing the basics, the author describes
each of the four types of intellectual
property—trademarks, copyrights, patents, and
trade secrets. For each type, she covers the
protection available by law, how it is obtained and
maintained, and what happens in cases of suspected
infringement. Emerging issues—such as cyber
squatting, protection of computer programs, and the
ethics of biotechnology patents—are also
discussed, as well as recent changes in laws that
protect intellectual property.
Along the way, the reader is given advice to help
determine when something is do it yourself,
and when it would be best to hire a lawyer. For those
activities that you can do yourself, there are 20
examples to use as patterns for your own documents.
For those where a lawyer should be used, the author
recommends (p. 13): “Attempting to save money
by retaining council who may be unfamiliar with
intellectual property will only result in additional
costs in the long run and may lead to the loss of
critical rights and defenses. Money expended to
protect intellectual property is nearly always
worthwhile.”
Additionally, the author identifies aspects of
international law governing intellectual property,
explains how to perform an internal audit to identify
your organization’s intellectual property, and
provides information on useful Web sites.
Even though I’ve been interested in the
protection of intellectual property for many years,
this book contained a wealth of detail that was new
to me, as well as a few surprises, such as this quote
(p. 100): “One of the most common
misconceptions about music is that anyone is free to
play the radio or a purchased CD so the music can be
heard throughout his or her place of business. This
is not true, and in most cases the playing of music
this way is a copyright infringement.”
All in all, this is an important reference book
for any corporate or personal library.
 CHRISTINE ROBINSON has more
than 25 years of leadership experience in quality
systems for the process industries. She has a
master’s degree in quality, values, and
leadership from Marian College. An avid reader, she
spends a significant amount of time with her nose in
books and her body at the library.
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