Trade secrets, patents, brand identities, and copyrights all look so tempting to thieves, flouters, impersonators, pirates, and hackers. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in – your intellectual property is the main prize for cybercriminals.

They are a significant threat to your organization. Unfortunately, these cybercriminals have set their eyes on intellectual property theft, especially now when so many businesses are required to operate online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trade secrets, patents, your brand identity, copyrights, and all other creative works that are protected by law and have economic value can be categorized as intellectual property. Let’s see what common problems with IP are, why intellectual property protection matters, and how you can protect it.

The Problem with Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is the lifeblood of countless businesses operating online today. In fact, many business experts state this is the golden age for intellectual property, as it has never been more important than today.

If we take a look at the modern business landscape, only the businesses that are ready to innovate and adapt are the ones that progress. Entire enterprises are built around patented technology. All these factors made IP incredibly valuable to businesses.

That’s where hackers see their opportunity, and that’s why we have so many different issues and setbacks that may arise from such a potent business landscape. Some of the most common risks associated with intellectual property are:

• Availability risk – online businesses are required to make information available for others to see, but they are also required to protect the data against possible infringements.
• Compliance risk – there are many legal issues regarding intellectual property, which is a reason more to be well aware of all potential legal implications.
• Brand risk – part of your intellectual property is your company’s brand, and it’s among the most valuable assets of your organization. Therefore, protecting your brand reputation and image should be one of your top priorities.
• Access risk – the risk of your data falling into the wrong hands is always present, especially in the world of e-commerce. To ensure the protection of trade secrets and all other valuable pieces of sensitive information, you should assess your data access risks and make sure your data access won’t be inappropriately refused or granted.
• Business value – know your company’s intellectual property business value at all times so that you can track and monitor it.

How to Protect Intellectual Property

Since there are so many intellectual property threats lurking in every corner of the online business environment, it would be wise to know how to protect your intellectual property. We can give you a few tips:

• Don’t file your patents.
• Have separate teams work on your intellectual property to ensure none of your teams can access the complete product.
• Open-source your technology to focus on the added value.
• Avoid joint ownership.
• Register domain names, products, and your business.
• Create licensing, non-disclosure, or confidentiality contracts.
• Implement security measures such as setting up password protection, data encryption, using a VPN, establishing Wi-Fi protected access, and web scraping.

Web Scraping is a Factor

Nearly all businesses rely on the internet and technology to conduct their daily operations. While the internet and technology help these companies by fueling their success, dynamics, and growth, they also expose them to a great deal of risk.

The majority of businesses are either stored in a system or have their intellectual property connected online. Both solutions are vulnerable to file corruption, data breaches, hacking, etc. However, web scraping can help eliminate those risks.

Web scraping is a data-gathering technique that allows you to extract any content from target websites to use that data for your personal purposes. Since web scraping allows you to use content from any website without getting detected, it is a perfect tool for:

• Protecting your intellectual property
• Gaining competitive advantage
• Improving SEO ranking
• Creating data aggregation
• Performing market research
• Web monitoring

With web scraping, you’ll be able to monitor the market to quickly detect and eliminate any IP threats that might be heading your way.

Web Monitoring as a Protection Tool

Monitoring the web helps ensure intellectual property protection online. Since the primary goal of web scraping is to gather data, you can use that data to see if there are any fakes of your products or any other intellectual property on the web.

You can monitor social media platforms and online advertisement campaigns to detect any cases of your brand infringement or counterfeits. Finally, web monitoring and scraping can help you establish a network of trustworthy marketplaces where you can sell your products. In case any fakes of your products appear on these marketplaces, you can easily and quickly remove them.

You can check the Oxylabs website for more information about a solution to protect your intellectual property by monitoring the web.

Conclusion

If you own a brand, it’s crucial to remain proactive. Malefactors and IP thieves are always ready to steal anything they can, so you have to be ready too. Web scraping allows you to harness the power of automation and make it work for you.

Leverage the power of web monitoring and scraping to make sure your business is protected from thieves at all times.