Intellectual property (IP) protection is critical for data and market intelligence companies such as MBrain, SIS, Fastmarkets, and yours as well. The number one reason data protection for your content is so important, is that your IP is directly linked to your bottom line. In this post, we’ll explore the type of IP a company like yours should be protecting and the best method to use for protecting it.
Companies like yours collect and analyze hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pieces of data regularly. These numbers, bits of code, research, and various elements of digital information are then all brought together to form a massive body of facts and figures. From there, your company breaks it down into a readable and understandable summary that can be used to guide businesses and organizations on things like investments, operations, service and product offerings, and more. In other words, your company mines data to help people and organizations make informed decisions now and in the future.
The reports, analyses, forms, and even the methods you use to collect and sort through all the data are all pieces of IP that your company needs to protect. Without proper protection, your IP could fall into the hands of unauthorized users - i.e. the people or organizations who haven't purchased your reports or haven't subscribed to your products and services. Unauthorized users render your IP less valuable to those potential clients that would have otherwise paid your company for access.
An interesting and perhaps unnerving fact is that under trademark and copyright law, your organization’s IP may not be completely protected. Therefore, if it were to fall into the hands of unauthorized users, you might not have any legal recourse to have content removed from another website, or gain any compensation to make up for the loss in revenue that could occur due to the leak or unauthorized file sharing.
As the website Smart Data Collective reported, the reason for this is that “most of the technology companies use to analyze business trends weren’t developed in house.” When your company runs an analysis and creates reports, you most likely use third-party software to do so. These software programs are already copyrighted, which is what leads to the legal loophole for copyright protection of your content.
To make matters worse, once content falls into the wrong hands and gets published on a different website, it’s that much harder to control access. Even if you do manage to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint, and successfully remove the content from the web, it’s never fully gone. With internet archive programs like Wayback Machine, and digital bots that crawl the web looking for valuable files, leaked content can pop up on several websites within a matter of minutes. And, the more valuable the content, the more likely it is to be shared over and over again, making complete removal from the web that much more difficult.
CSO Digital Magazine reported that “IP theft costs U.S. companies as much as $600 billion a year according to the Theft of Intellectual Property Commission.” Because “getting the stolen information back — putting the proverbial cat back in its bag — is usually impossible.” One method of protection they recommend using is software that encrypts your content and allows you to control who can access it. We may be biased, but we agree completely.
For example, let's say your company is analyzing financial data related to a commodity like steel. For the past several months, your team of data analysts have been compiling countless pieces of information and identifying trends that indicate steel prices are set to increase more dramatically this year than in previous years. Their extensive data and insights are published in a new market report that will be sold on their website. This kind of information is worth its weight in gold because it's one of the premium reports that sells for $10,000 as a one-time purchase or offer to their premium subscription clients.
Unfortunately, one of your clients wasn't aware of your copyright rules and they shared this report on their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. It’s now being downloaded and passed along to others at a rapid pace before you can notify them about the breach and request the content to be taken down or even file a DMCA complaint to have it removed. Before you know it, hundreds of people and other companies have access to it and you haven't earned a penny from them. This seemingly simple gesture of sharing a report on social media costs your company potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention, the backlash you will receive from your current premium subscribers. After all, they paid a premium subscription fee to receive these high-value types of reports from you.
Though the report and the data contained within it are technically copyright protected, unfortunately, your firm still suffers the immediate repercussions of the file leak. With that in mind, what can you do to better protect your intellectual property? The answer is to control access to each piece of content with a digital rights management solution, and the most versatile one on the market is Vitrium.
Vitrium is a digital rights management (DRM) solution that helps protect and control the price reports, research reports and other data intelligence information that organizations like yours distribute to your subscribers and other high-value clients, while also providing a method to track the client usage of this content. With our Enterprise Content Security and DRM software, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that all of your documents, images, video and other pieces of intellectual property (IP) are controlled and protected from unauthorized users.
Working with Vitrium is the easiest way to ensure that you maintain ownership and distribution control of your valuable IP. Upon signing up for our service, you can load your content securely to our system, add authorized users, apply settings and controls, and then share without worrying whether or not it will soon be trending on LinkedIn, Twitter or another online platform. Only those who are authorized to see your content will be able to do so. Vitrium-protected content doesn't require the user to download any plug-ins or separate applications. And, if you integrate Vitrium with your website or other back-end systems, you can take advantage of single sign-on access and automating other processes.
We’ve helped businesses of all shapes and sizes manage the protection and control of their digital assets. Intellectual property protection is the key to protecting your revenue streams which is vital for any organization! Don’t take our word for it though. See for yourself what Vitrium can do for your organization, by booking a demo today. We look forward to working with you.