Here are some good ways you can protect your business, company or start up legally.

by Stanley Alieke, Esq.

Starting a business and sustaining a business is a big deal especially in this part of the world where businesses are likely to fail than flourish and that’s why as a business owner you need to always cover every loophole that would expose your business to poachers, copycats or impostors and even from the general public.

In order to remain in business, you need to constantly protect your business judicially and judiciously as your brain child and as your intellectual property.

Here are some of the ways how you as a business owner can legally protect your budding or booming business or startup.

Register your business with the corporate affairs commission (CAC). The first step of starting a business is registering that business with the corporate affairs so that the business can legally become a body corporate. One of the benefits of registering your business with the corporate affairs is that your business name will be reserved and you have the exclusive right to be the sole owner and user of such a name you have given your business and customers and associates have come to know your business with. When you register your business with the corporate affairs, your business name becomes protected for you against impostors who would want to ride on the business name that you have built to become a household name. Also, your business becomes a statutory body that can sue and be sued.
You can also protect your business by creating trademarks and patents for your business inventions and innovations. You can trademark your business logo, the designs, the brand and every other intellectual property that spanned off your business. Whenever you trademark any of your business intellectual properties, that becomes protected legally and you have exclusive right to that logo, designs or brand and you can sue for infringement whenever another person uses your trademarked property without your expression permission.
You can also protect your business by making use of contracts and contractual terms duly drafted and signed by you and anybody you want to partner or go into business with. You can make use of contracts to protect your business by inserting clauses like; non disclosure agreements, your business rights and remedies and even your own rights as the business owner.
If your business runs a website, you can as well protect your business and your business website by inserting privacy policy and terms and conditions on the website.
You can also protect your business by copyrighting your contents especially if you are in the business where you have to constantly create and put out contents. Copyright (or author’s right) is a term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. You can copyright your literary works like books, articles, paintings, videos, graphics, maps, even your database and computer programs can be copyrighted. Surprisingly, you can also copyright your social media posts and contents.
If you are in a business where you constantly create and manufacture products you should protect that blossoming business of yours by patenting your products against intellectual property theft. A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem.
If you are in the business of sales, you can protect your business by inserting refund or return policy clauses or making known your refund or return policy in every goods that a customer has purchased or is taking home. These refund or return policy clauses will protect you as a salesperson from unsatisfactory customers who would want to take advantage of you.
These are some of the ways that you as a business owner can legally protect your business to avoid going into unnecessary legal battles or in some extreme cases losing your business to competitors.

Barr. Stanley Alieke.
Lead Counsel, Stanley Alieke & Co.
infoitooknow@gmail.com.

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