All of Life’s questions are answered in the movies. Even the legal ones. You just need to know where to look.
I watched the movie Paris, Texas the other night, starring the late great Harry Dean Stanton. And in it, the Stanton character has purchased a small plot of vacant land, in a dusty, undeveloped area in Paris, Texas. Kind of a nowhere place.
Now, the movie is not really about that piece of property in Paris Texas, but the movie does explore the value the Stanton character places on that land. In a key scene, he describes how he purchased it in the hopes that one day he would build a house on it and it would serve as a place to live for him and his young family.
It’s a powerful scene. And it’s a powerful movie. In part because everyone can identify with the universal notion that owning property - land or a house- has an intrinsic value, beyond that of its market value. When one owns property, even if it is a small, dusty, undeveloped speck of a strip in the middle of nowhere, well that person has something of significance. Something with potential. Something to hold on to. Something worth protecting.
Watching that scene, it reminded me that the same is very much true with respect to intellectual property.
Protecting your intellectual property really begins with the understanding that your intellectual property has significant intrinsic value. Whatever intellectual property you have created and own- be it a book, a film, a painting, a photograph, an invention, a logo, a business idea- it is no different than owning real land or a house. Your intellectual property- even in its nascent stages- is something of significance. Something with potential. Something to hold on to. Something worth protecting.
If you think about your intellectual property along those lines, then you will approach protecting your intellectual property with the proper mindset. That is, you will protect it properly.
To begin doing just that, check out our website for more specific information and then contact us at The Fraser Firm. This will ensure that when time and circumstance come together you will be best positioned to take that small, dusty, undeveloped, piece of intellectual property and build something great.
Comments