What happens when a company doesn't protect its iP rights?

I meet entrepreneurs everywhere. 

I’m not talking about at work.

No, I meet entrepreneurs at parties, my kids' school functions, the beach and, yes, even in elevators, on occasion. I’m a patent attorney and Florida Bar certified IP attorney. There aren't that many of us in Florida...

Anyway, I was talking to this entrepreneur. I’ll call him Victor. Like in Dragnet, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Turns out, a huge megacorp decided it wanted to steal Victor’s 'intangible property' or iP. 

How did they go about it?

Megacorp set up a meeting with Victor’s team. Great! Another big sale, right? 

The training that Victor offers is amazing. It sells itself.

Only Megacorp wanted to know details without even knowing the price. Something didn’t seem right.

Then, at a training requested by Megacorp, a one-off, not the usual schedule for training needed by such a large corporation, Victor met one of his former employees that Megacorp had hired as in house trainer.  

But a sales a sale, right?

Only...

  ...a couple months later...

Victor finds out his former employee is providing Victor’s training in house, without a license, and Megacorp is using Victor’s materials with only modest changes.

But since Victor never protected his materials and couldn't even show that he owned it. There wasn't much he could do, right?

What happens when a company does it right from the very beginning?

I met Tim Bryce at a business club, before all the Covid restrictions, and we talked about his former company. 

Tim's company registered its copyrights in all of its training materials.

He protected the entire content of his training as a trade secret, too, requiring ALL of his trainers and customers to sign confidentiality agreements BEFORE sharing any of his proprietary know-how. 

When Megacorp started using Tim's training materials and proprietary methods, his lawyers sent Megacorp a cease and desist letter.

Even though Tim's company was tiny compared to Megacorp, when it refused to pay up or cease and desist, Tim's company sued.

Although it took years and hundreds of thousands in legal fees, Tim's company won, forcing Megacorp to pay damages for the iP it misappropriated. 

(If Tim had done one more thing right, he might have avoided a long drawn out litigation, altogether, but that discussion should be saved for another day.)

By protecting his company's iP using copyright registrations and reasonable measures to keep his know-how a proprietary trade secret...

Tim made it possible for his tiny consulting company to defeat a much larger infringer of his iP rights.

This made his consulting company much more valuable.

In fact, Tim might have been able to out license his training to generate passive, recurring revenue, without the costs and inconvenience of constant travel and the overhead associated with employing his trainers.

This would be a win-win!