Here are a number of simple actions that will help you take ownership of your creative business ideas before you divulge them. The more proactive you are, the better protected you’ll be.

This article is the response to a recent question prompted by my last article: Crystallizing Your Creative Business (Part 1).

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Crystallizing (ie setting, documenting and protecting) your Intellectual Property is a worthwhile process with a very worthwhile result. It forces us creative types to take a moment and look at what makes our creative businesses unique and valuable (as distinct from ourselves as the creators within the business). Most of us are just getting used to protecting the IP in our OWS – our creations. A big and brilliant step. But what about the IP that’s sitting there in the creating, the creator, your business?

I was recently given the arduous task of gathering, mapping out and securing the intellectual property of our fledging agency, Engage Brandcraft. Yawn? Not so much. In fact, if you run a small creative agency or are building your profile as a freelancer, you may enjoy this.

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The web is currently buzzing about Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie and this move is having unexpected consequences for the Twitterverse: dozens of businesses who were built on top of the Twitter API will now have to live in Tweetie’s shadow (renamed Twitter for iPhone) and choose between closing down or finding new avenues to explore.

So what does this have to do with Myows?

By everybody’s opinion, there are too many Twitter apps. But we have a solution for the global programmers’ community: Follow Myows

I’m not talking about following us on Twitter ( @Myows ). No. I’m talking about following us in our fight to curb down copyright infringement and help creatives worldwide help themselves.

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I was recently on one of my more vociferous tirades… something to do with prolific creative theft, copying and piracy… about the flagrant disregard for the rights of fellow creatives (and their livelihoods). How can everyone be so dishonest and selfish? As always, reason found me eventually and calm returned. This time it came in the form of a lawyer friend… She rightly pointed out that in many (if not most) cases involving copyrights there is no clear antagonist, no obvious victim. Put simply: both parties often feel that they are in the right.

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Today I will demonstrate how quick and painless it is to use Myows to protect the copyright on a design.

For the 1 minute demonstration, I’m using a flyer I designed today, but it could as well be a logo, picture, or any kind of file.

The simple act of uploading my design guarantees that I have irrefutable proof of my date of possession in case an unscrupulous designer copies my work, then claims it as his own.

I could also upload sketches and source files as supporting documents, but that will be for another video!

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Anyone know how many creative people there are out there? Current estimates put it at around 6,692,030,277. 

Huh?

Yup! That’s a massive figure right? How did I come up with that one? Given a simple assumption: everybody on the planet is creative.

Everybody.
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I set myself the creative challenge of coming up with 10 ways to use Myows other than for its intended purpose.

Some are ridiculous, some are based on precedent but many I have just made up because I am feeling inspired.

If you have more suggestions or creative uses of Myows to share, just leave a comment.

Please remember that the real reason Myows is here is to protect and manage your copyrights.

If you really wanted, you could also:

1)   Get together with other Myows users and play the world’s most certifiable game of ching chong cha (rock, paper, scissors) by all uploading pics at the same time.

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So Myows is all about protecting and managing… well Your OWs.

But what exactly is an OW?

The official version that you’ll find on the Myows site is: “Anything you create that is not a copy of something else and has been ‘reduced to material form’ (meaning it’s not just an idea).”

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The Myows logo and mascot have received a lot of attention and people are asking how we came up with them. So today, I’ll detail the process of how we went from brainstorming ideas to producing a critically acclaimed illustrative logo.

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Last year, my creative studio (Engage Brandcraft) was accused of stealing the intellectual property of a bigger, much more aggressive company who had in fact clearly stolen ours.

They threatened us with legal action if we didn’t ‘cease and desist’ with the flagrant use of our own original work (in this particular case, our name and logo – a very nasty allegation indeed). Trademark issues ensued – we were being accused of passing-off and copyright violations.

Goliath eventually gave in but not without a very expensive counter-threat from the lawyers on our side. Taking it to court would probably have cost in the region of approximately 50 000 USD. We came off lightly. Yet we’d done nothing wrong to start with! In time and money alone the exercise cost us well over 2000 USD. And let me assure you, we didn’t have that kind of money lying around. Similar predicaments face creators from all walks of life, daily, across the globe. Other “writers” steal our articles, companies turn our Youtube^® uploads into ads, bullies copy our logos and then accuse us of being the perpetrators.

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