Leveraging Your IP with Erin Austin

Once you get to a certain point in your expertise business, you inevitably start to think about how best to leverage your intellectual property.

Whether that looks like books, courses, training materials or even licensing programs, it’s critical to take the right steps to protect and leverage the “fruits of your intellect.”

Jonathan and I invited IP consultant and lawyer Erin Austin of Think Beyond IP to share her wisdom on maximizing the value of your intellectual property:

How to think about your intellectual property and the steps to take to protect it under U.S. law.

When you might decide to give your content away to spread an idea vs. keep it close for revenue generation.

The role of registering and monitoring various elements of your intellectual property.

How to decide whether you’re ready to license your knowledge (hint: it’s not for beginners).

Using licensing to scale your business and create a saleable asset.

Quotables

“We use intellectual property laws to provide a legal monopoly on using our intellect.”—EA

“Under U.S. copyright law…the copyright applies at the moment of creation.”—EA

“If that trademark has secondary meaning in the mark—like everyone associates it with you—you really do want to make sure that you get protection for that so that you don’t lose it.”—EA

“Make sure you are monitoring use of that (trademarked) term on the internet. So if people are using it and you’re not asking them to stop using it…then you can lose it.”—EA

“There is a perception that IP or intellectual property is a product and it’s not a product like a book or a course, or even a licensing program. IP is the exclusive right to exploit your intellect.”—EA

“When we are experts, we are creating intellectual property every single day, because intellectual property is the fruit of our intellect.”—EA

“A license is anytime I’m giving permission to a third party to use my intellectual property.”—EA

“Obviously it (licensing) is not for beginners. It really is for someone who has established their methodology, that you have a record of success of happy clients where you do have these processes in place.”—EA

“The key (to make your firm saleable) is making sure that it’s something that can run without you…you wanna make sure that you’ve developed that independence.”—EA