There are few things more exciting in law practice than seeing a startup take shape and come to market. From the initial meeting of the principals and company formation to actual launch of products and services, the process of bringing a startup to life and watching it evolve never gets old. Inevitably, every startup faces hurdles… and those hurdles do not exclude the creation and protection of intellectual property assets. In fact, almost all of the startups I have had the pleasure to counsel over the last 20+ years have had challenges regarding their IP and how to protect and best leverage it in the marketplace. What is even more surprising is that there is a specific step that most of these startups ignored regarding their IP that caused headaches at some point along the road to market (and beyond)… and it is not what you may think.
