In the modern world, entrepreneurship is an exciting business process that extends our creativity and helps us develop strategies to think ‘outside the box’. This course covers the main themes in entrepreneurship such as innovation, trade mark and patent strategies. You will be taught that entrepreneurship is about managing a group of people to achieve a common goal for the benefit of an organization or society. Using proactive entrepreneurial behaviour, entrepreneurship is about optimizing risks and innovation to take advantage of opportunities, amongst other tasks that will be covered. You will learn that on the way to success, the entrepreneur develops technology and protects it with intellectual property (IP), which gives the entrepreneur a competitive advantage over their competitors. You will discover that intellectual property protects technology for the benefit of entrepreneurship in many ways. Patents and trade marks are some of the ways through which that protection is achieved. Throughout this course, you will notice that the terminology changes from one type of protection to another.

As you continue your studies, you will learn that entrepreneurship may result from innovation. Including process and outcome, innovation is a technological change new to both enterprise and the economy that has diffused into the economy and is adopted by a firm. Entrepreneurs may achieve innovation through a three-step process, starting from idea selection to the creation of value via execution. As a prospective entrepreneur, you are advised not to take part in competitions to share the ideas that you might use to innovate and create your business and you need a trade mark for that business. A trade mark is a mark capable of being represented graphically and distinguishes goods and services from those of others. A mark may be a device or a signature. It may also be a single letter or a numeric, provided it is distinct, not deceptive and capable of describing the quality and the geographical origin of the product or service. A trade mark should be unique to your particular business. Trade mark infringement is unauthorized use of a mark or reference to goods or services and may lead to legal action. Contrary to other forms of intellectual property, a trade mark never expires.

Finally, you will explore patents. You will be taught that a patent is an exclusive right granted by the sovereign of the state to the owner of the invention to make, sell, use and manufacture an invention upon complete disclosure of the invention, provided the invention satisfies certain criteria stipulated by law for a limited period. A patent is a territorial right with a lifetime of twenty years. It is worthy to note that the ‘claims’ of a patent define the scope of the invention. Since ‘claims’ are very important, you should, as an entrepreneur, make sure that your claims are drafted correctly. Unfortunately, there might be an infringement of a patent and this occurs when a competitor makes, uses, sells, offers to sell or imports an embodiment of the invention without the permission of the patent owner. Though licensing is one way to solve patent infringement, out of court settlement is advised. This course will be of great interest to any business person who would significantly like to improve their IP portfolio. Students and prospective entrepreneurs will find this course particularly interesting. Start this course today and refine your understanding of entrepreneurship and IP management.