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How to protect your brand: 

• Trademark your business name and logo with IP Australia.

• Create social media accounts and websites. This ensures you get there first and other businesses can't register your business name. 

• Monitor the landscape regularly to ensure that nobody is using your trademark (brand copycats).

• Send cease and desist letters​ quickly for unauthorised use of your business name or logo, also send cease and desist letters if someone is using a brand which looks or sounds similar to your brand.

• Manage your brand reputation. 
   

How to protect your ideas​:​

• Carefully record your ideas and date them. Intellectual property law protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself.  

• Register a patent for inventions with IP Australia.

• Create confidentiality/non-disclosure agreements​ with people and businesses you share ideas with.

• Ensure in your contracts there is a clause which discusses how ideas which are generated through collaborations.

• Send a cease and desist letter if someone breaches your patent.
   

How to protect your copy, music and pictures:​

• Create unique content which is easily identifiable as yours.

• Insert a copyright notice.

• Include a watermark on pictures.​

• If you engage another person or business to create content, ensure that the contract has an assignment of the intellectual property clause. This clause ensures that the content you are paying them to create is then owned by you. Without such a clause, they could then sell the same piece of content to someone else. 
   

How to protect confidential information and trade secrets​:

• Non-disclosure agreements are useful when working on sensitive projects.

• Confidentiality terms in employment agreements and contractor agreements.

• Policies and procedures on how information is handled and stored.

• Implement security measures: Password protection, encryption and two-factor authentication. Don't share user accounts. This enables you to remotely log a user out.