To succeed in your business, you must be different.  Otherwise, the only thing that separates you from your competition is the price of your products and services.  This leads to price cutting and lower profit margins until only large businesses can compete. One way to differentiate yourself is your intellectual property: patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets.  All businesses have some form of intellectual property.

Intellectual property is not limited to your products and services.  It may also include your customers, vendors, decision making, communications, or  marketing strategy. The benefits of managing an intellectual property program may be reduced costs, customer retention, longer product life and many other factors that will improve the success of your business.