In the high-tech industry, your brand is often worth more than your product. Think of valuable tech companies: their names, logos, and slogans carry enormous commercial weight, as they are recognized by consumers. Trademark registration is the legal foundation of that brand value.

Most Canadian tech companies think about intellectual property (IP) in the same way they think about insurance: something to deal with after something goes wrong. The companies that win in the long run think about IP the way they think about product development: strategically, early, and continuously.

What do Google's search algorithm, the formula behind your competitor's AI model, and your own proprietary training dataset have in common? None of them are patented. They are trade secrets, and in the high-tech industry, these are strategically valuable intellectual property (IP) assets.

Here's a scenario that plays out in Canadian tech companies every week: a founder hires a freelance developer to build their platform. The developer delivers great code. Then the relationship ends, and the founder discovers the copyright in that code may not belong to the company at all.