MAC-SSIIM Key Theme 5

IP protection - Formal and Informal ways

(part of the MAC-SSIIM training and support solution)

The need and usage of protection methods varies in line with variations in the company’s operating environment, business activity forms and processes.

This guide provides information on operating methods commonly used in companies and proven useful to protect intellectual capital.

The term “formal knowledge protection methods” refers to both industrial property rights and copyrights, because they are statutory and the items they protect must meet formally defined criteria.

In addition to formal protection methods, we present the most common contract types related to knowledge protection.

However, the capacity of formal methods and contracts largely depends on the resources available in companies.

Therefore, in addition, we present methods and operating models that can be used to support formal protection tools or instead of them.

These methods are called informal knowledge protection methods.

It is important to bear in mind that the methods presented in this manual are not mutually exclusive, nor do they compete with each other, but rather support each other, which means that their joint use provides the best possible protection for a company’s intellectual capital.

Moreover, it should be noted that there is no optimal combination of them, as they depend on the situation of the company.

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