🧭 What to protect first
A sensible order for a startup with limited time and money.
You do not need to file everything on day one. Spending your first legal budget in the wrong place is a common, expensive mistake. This order keeps you protected without draining cash you need for building.
- Lock your name before you fall in love with it. Run a quick trademark and domain search so you do not build a brand you cannot legally own. This costs nothing but an afternoon.
- Register the company. A legal entity lets you open a bank account, sign contracts, hire, and own IP in the company's name rather than your own.
- Put founder terms in writing. Equity split, vesting and roles, signed while everyone is still friends. Use our equity tools to model the split first.
- Assign all IP to the company. Every founder, employee and contractor signs an agreement assigning what they create to the company. Without this, your startup may not actually own its own product.
- File the trademark on your name and logo once you are confident in the brand.
- Consider a patent only if you have a genuinely novel, technical invention and the budget to protect it.
⚠ The most common founder mistake
Building a product before assigning IP to the company. If a contractor wrote part of your code and never signed an assignment, they may legally own that part. Fix this early, while it is a signature and not a lawsuit.
🏛️ Company registration
Turning an idea into a legal entity that can own, sign and raise.
Registering a company gives your startup a separate legal identity. That entity, not you personally, owns the IP, signs the contracts, holds the bank account and carries the liability. It is also a precondition for most funding, since investors buy shares in a company, not in a person.
Common structures
What you generally need to register
- A unique company name that clears the registry and a trademark search.
- Identity and address proof for each founder or director.
- A registered office address.
- A capital structure: who owns what, and how many shares exist.
- Founding documents (the charter or constitution that governs the company).
✦ Founder tip
Reserve the matching domain and core social handles the same week you register the name. A clean, consistent brand is far cheaper to secure early than to reclaim later. Browse our resource directory for trusted incorporation and compliance tools.
™️ Trademarks
Owning your name, logo and brand identity.
A trademark protects what customers use to recognise you: your brand name, logo, tagline, and sometimes even a distinctive colour or sound. Registering it gives you the exclusive right to use that mark for your category, and the standing to stop copycats. The little ™ means you are claiming a mark; the ® means it is registered and enforceable.
How registration works
- Search first. Check the trademark registry for conflicting marks in your category before you apply or commit to the brand.
- Pick your classes. Trademarks are filed under classes of goods and services (there are 45). Software, for example, sits in different classes than physical products. File in the classes that match what you actually sell.
- File the application with your mark, the classes, and proof of use or intent to use.
- Examination and publication. The office reviews it, then publishes it so others can object. If no valid objection lands, it proceeds to registration.
- Maintain it. Trademarks can last indefinitely, but you must renew them periodically and keep using the mark.
Going global
If you plan to operate in several countries, the Madrid Protocol lets you file one international application that extends protection to many member countries, instead of filing separately in each. It is usually cheaper and simpler than country-by-country filing once you are in three or more markets.
⚠ Search before you spend
Founders routinely design a logo, print materials and buy a domain, then discover the name is already trademarked in their category. A one-hour search at the start saves a painful, costly rebrand later.
⚗️ Patents
Protecting a genuinely novel invention, if you have one.
A patent gives you a time-limited monopoly (typically around 20 years) on a new invention, in exchange for publishing how it works. It is powerful but slow and expensive, and it is not right for every startup. Patents suit deep-tech, hardware, biotech, and novel processes far more than they suit most software or consumer apps.
What can be patented
To be patentable, an invention generally must be novel (new to the world), non-obvious (not an obvious tweak to something known), and useful (capable of industrial application). Pure abstract ideas, business methods and, in many jurisdictions, software "as such" are often excluded or hard to protect.
The provisional route
A provisional patent application is a founder's friend. It is cheaper, lighter on formality, and secures your filing date for up to a year while you test the market and decide whether to invest in a full application. It buys you time and lets you say "patent pending."
Going global: the PCT
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) lets you file one international application that reserves your right to seek patents in many countries, deferring the expensive country-by-country decisions for up to 30 months. It is the standard path for startups that may need protection in multiple markets.
⚠ Disclosure can destroy novelty
In many countries, publicly describing or selling your invention before you file can make it unpatentable. If a patent matters to you, talk to a patent attorney before you demo, pitch publicly or publish.
✦ Be honest about whether you need one
For most software startups, speed, brand and execution protect you better than a patent ever will. Spend the money on building and distribution unless your moat genuinely is the invention itself.
©️ Copyright
Automatic protection for your original work, including code.
Copyright protects original creative and authored work: your source code, written content, designs, marketing copy, videos, music and more. The good news is that it is automatic the moment you create the work in a fixed form. You do not have to register it for protection to exist.
So why register?
Registration is optional but useful. In a dispute, a registered copyright is far stronger evidence of ownership and date, and in some jurisdictions it unlocks additional remedies. For a startup, the bigger issue is usually not registration but ownership.
⚠ Who owns your code?
By default, a contractor or freelancer may own the copyright in what they create for you, even after you pay them, unless your agreement explicitly assigns it to the company. Every developer, designer and writer you work with should sign an IP assignment. This is the single most important copyright step for a startup.
Open-source: read the licence
If your product uses open-source components, you are bound by their licences. Permissive licences (like MIT) are easy; copyleft licences (like GPL) can require you to open your own code under certain conditions. Know what is in your stack before an investor's technical due diligence finds out for you.
🎨 Design rights
Protecting the look and shape of a product.
A registered design (called a design patent in some countries) protects the visual appearance of a product: its shape, pattern, configuration or ornamentation, rather than how it works. If your edge is a distinctive physical product or a recognisable interface look, this is the right tool.
- It covers appearance, not function. Function is the job of a patent.
- It is cheaper and faster than a patent.
- Like trademarks, novelty usually matters, so register before you reveal the design widely.
For most software startups this is a minor concern, but for hardware, consumer products and fashion it can be central.
🔐 Trade secrets
Protection through secrecy, not registration.
A trade secret is valuable information that you protect by keeping it confidential: an algorithm, a recipe, a customer list, a pricing model, a process. There is nothing to file. Protection lasts as long as the secret stays secret and you take reasonable steps to keep it that way.
How you actually protect a trade secret
- Confidentiality agreements (NDAs) with anyone who sees the sensitive information.
- Access controls so only the people who need the secret can reach it.
- Clear marking of confidential materials.
- Off-boarding discipline when employees or contractors leave.
✦ Patent or secret?
A patent publishes your invention in exchange for a monopoly. A trade secret keeps it hidden with no time limit, but offers no protection if someone independently discovers or reverse-engineers it. Choose based on whether the advantage can be kept genuinely secret.
📜 Founder & commercial agreements
The paperwork that prevents the disputes nobody plans for.
IP registration protects your assets from outsiders. These agreements protect the company from problems inside it, and from the everyday risks of doing business. They are unglamorous and they matter enormously.
The agreements most startups need
- Founders' agreement with equity split, vesting and what happens if someone leaves. Model the split with our dilution and ESOP tools first.
- IP assignment agreements so everything created for the company belongs to the company.
- Employment and contractor agreements covering confidentiality, IP and non-solicitation.
- Customer terms and privacy policy governing how people use your product and how you handle their data. See our terms and privacy templates as a starting point.
- Investment documents when you raise. Understand the SAFE and convertible note mechanics before you sign.
⚠ Vesting protects the team, not just the company
Founder equity that vests over time (commonly four years with a one-year cliff) means a co-founder who leaves in month three does not walk away with a quarter of the company. It protects everyone who stays.