How To Protect Your Intellectual Property Online: 4 Essential Steps

This may be the most important blog you ever read for your business. Why, you may ask? 

Simply put, it’s essential for your future success to learn how to protect your intellectual property online, whether you’re an online entrepreneur, content creator, or educator. Your intellectual property is the essence of your business, making it your most valuable asset.

Whether you’re building a brand, creating digital courses, or selling educational services online, protecting your intellectual property from theft or misuse is crucial to sustaining your business long term. In our experience, it’s best to be proactive with protecting your intellectual property online and familiarizing yourself with legal practices – we’ll go over some copyright courses and intellectual property tutorials later on – so you know the exact steps to take in case you find yourself in a sticky situation. 

In this post, we’ll cover intellectual property basics along with the 4 essential steps you need to know to help secure your intellectual property online and protect your digital content. As cliche as it sounds, it really is better to be safe than sorry! 

We’ll share valuable insights directly from legal expert Yasmine Salem Hamdan’s webinar on building strong legal foundations for your business and from Rosezena Pierce, a trademark and business attorney, who will  also share tips on how to protect your intellectual property online.

Ready to learn how to protect your intellectual property online? 

Continue reading or skip ahead: 

Editor’s note: This article is for informational purposes only. Please consult a qualified legal professional before relying solely on the advice shared below.

Related: How To Avoid Copyright Infringement (10 Expert Tips)

What is intellectual property?

Before we dive into the ins-and-outs of learning how to protect your intellectual property online, it’s important to have a clear understanding of exactly what the term intellectual property means. 

Intellectual property refers to anything that is created from the mind. Essentially, it is any form of knowledge or expression that is fabricated with one’s intellect.

Yasmine Salem Hamdan, an intellectual property lawyer and founder of Coaches and Company explains: “Intellectual property is the intangible creations of the human intellect.”

This includes things like stories, artwork, inventions, and online courses. Just like any other kind of property, intellectual property can be bought, sold, and owned by multiple people. Anything you write, create, design, and produce can be classed as your intellectual property. These are intangible assets that hold value. 

For example, as a course creator your intellectual property includes: 

• The names of your products or services
• The design of your products or services
• The online course content you create
• The videos and online resources you create

While they can’t necessarily be held or touched, sometimes intellectual property is way more valuable than any physical asset. And just like other types of property that you can own, intellectual property comes with its own set of legal rights.

Why is it important to protect your intellectual property online?

Long gone are the days when the value of your business was tied up in physical inventory and equipment. Today, few course creators and online educators have a brick and mortar business with products that you can touch and hold.

If you’re a digital entrepreneur creating products like online courses, the value of your business is going to lie almost entirely in your intellectual property assets. This means protecting those online assets needs to be the number one priority for your business.

Rosezena Pierce, a trademark and business attorney and online business coach, with over 118,000 followers on Instagram, explains: “If it’s worth building, it should be worth securing.”

If you don’t secure your intellectual property in the first couple days of starting a business, you risk having your creations stolen and sold elsewhere, therefore losing all the time and resources you have invested to build your brand.

Rosezena states: “I always ask people, would you build a house on land you don’t own? When building a brand, you want to make sure that you’re securing your brand before you even start to build it.” This is a key point that all creators should takeaway when it comes to protecting your intellectual property online.

Related: 1200+ Name Ideas for Your Coaching Business (Suggested by AI)

Types of intellectual property

Any online entrepreneur, content creator, or educator should know what intangible assets they need to protect – you wouldn’t want to see your newest online course being replicated and sold by someone else! It’s a good practice to verse yourself and your business with the different ways you can protect your intellectual property.

There are a few different types of intellectual property, and more than one might apply to your creation.

Intellectual property is protected by law through patents, copyrights, trademarks, and industrial designs. These enable people to earn recognition or receive financial benefits from their creations or inventions. It also  prohibits others from stealing your work or engaging in copyright infringement, which is when you use copyright-protected material without the copyright holder’s permission.

Here is a breakdown of the ways you can protect your intellectual property:

• Patents – A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention. It provides the patent owner with the right to decide how the invention can be used by others, if at all. Patents benefit inventors by providing them with legal protection. Patents also benefit society by providing public access to technical information about these inventions. 

• Copyrights – Copyright describes a creator’s legal rights to their artistic and literary works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, films, paintings, and sculptures to computer programs, advertisements, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.

• Trademarks – Trademarks date back to ancient times when artisans used to put their signature or ‘mark’ on their products. A trademark is a sign that distinguishes the goods or services of one enterprise from those of other enterprises, and they are protected by intellectual property rights.

• Industrial designs – Industrial designs are about how something looks, and it protects the visual features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament, or any combination of these features applied to a finished product. Essentially, it protects the appearance of a product.

Next we will go more into depth on a couple of the key types of intellectual property and provide step-by-step examples so that you know how to protect your intellectual property online. 

Related: What is a Digital Product: Understanding the Basics for 2024

4 steps to protecting your intellectual property online

While copyright courses and intellectual property tutorials may go more into depth on how to protect your intellectual property online, we’ll provide a solid overview of the 4 essential steps you should consider when it comes to making sure your business ideas are protected. 

Without further ado, here are the 4 steps to protecting your intellectual property online: 

Step 1: Establish legal ownership with copyright and trademarks

One of the first (and most important) steps in protecting your intellectual property online is guaranteeing that you have legal ownership of your content and brand. As we mentioned before, this can be done through copyrights and trademarks, the two key legal tools that help safeguard different types of intellectual property. 

Copyrights

To go even more in-depth, a copyright is a form of law that protects your original creative works – anything ranging from written content, audio recordings, and videos to digital products like online courses or e-books. By registering your copyright for your business, you claim exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and profit from your own creation. This means that others aren’t allowed to reap the benefits of your own work. 

Reminder, if you’re running a business and outsourcing tasks, it’s important to make sure that you have the rights to any assets that are produced for your business. To do this, you need to get a formal agreement expressed in writing that confirms that the owner of the copyright transfers the rights to you.

Copyright is shown using the © symbol.

On your website, you can include a copyright notice to flag that you own the rights to the content. This should include the copyright symbol or the word copyright, along with the year you’ve released the content and the name of your business.

Here is an example from the Thinkific website:

Pro tip: You don’t have to use the © symbol in order to claim copyright. You still have rights in your content, even if you don’t use the symbol.

Trademarks

To dive deeper, trademarks are also essential as they protect the names, logos, and slogans that identify your products or services. By trademarking these intangible assets, you prohibit others from using similar branding that could confuse your audience or steal your market share.

There are four different types of trademarks:

1. Generic (a word or name)
2. Descriptive (a phrase or slogan)
3. Suggestive (a symbol or a logo)
4. Fanciful or arbitrary (a sound, tune, or saying)

Your trademark kicks in as soon as you begin using any of these assets commercially. For course creators, that means that as soon as you start using your brand name and logo when selling your course content, you start using your trademark.

Yasmine explains: “One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is failing to protect their brand early on. Your brand is the face of your business, and securing it with a trademark is essential to maintaining control over how it’s used.”

Trademarks are shown using the ™ and ® symbols. 

The ™ symbol is used if you have not yet registered your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If you have registered your trademark with the USPTO, you should use the ® symbol.

It can take a while to get a trademark registered with the USPTO. If you’ve applied for your trademark but it hasn’t been registered yet, you should use the ™ symbol while your application is pending.

The difference between copyright and trademark assets

Simply put, copyright is the content – any photos, videos, audio content, written content, emails and more. Trademarks are the identifier for a product – like the label on what is being sold, such as the name of your company, the name of your brand, your slogan or tagline, and even your logo.

Yasmine has a really good way to explain it: ”A trademark is the label. It’s the first thing that people interact with when they encounter your product or course. The copyright assets are what’s inside. They’re the meat of what you’re selling, including the course content, resources, videos, and more.”

Intellectual property example: Nike

Rosezena’s favorite example for understanding how to protect intellectual property is Nike. As a multi-billion dollar brand, Nike has their intellectual property sewn up tight.

Here’s how it works… 

Nike is the company’s name. This is a trademark that’s registered with the USPTO. Nike also has a trademark for their famous slogan Just Do It and another trademark for their logo, the swoosh symbol. All three of these trademarks are separate and independent: Nike is a trademark, Just Do It is a trademark, and the swoosh symbol is a trademark.

Nike can choose whether these trademarks exist independently, in pairs, or as a group. No one else can legally use any of these three things for their brand. When you’re trademarking your business, you can choose to file your name and your logo together, however this becomes a design mark, so you’ll have to continue to use your name and logo together to be protected under the trademark registration.

The better option is to follow Nike’s example and register them as separate trademarks. Although it’s more expensive, it gives you greater flexibility for your business.

Action steps

Moving forward with your own business, here are the two steps you should take to protect your intellectual property online:

• Register copyrights for your original content with the U.S. Copyright Office or equivalent in your country.
• Conduct a trademark clearance search and register your business name, course names, and logos with the USPTO, or equivalent in your country, to ensure no one else is using them or can use them in the future. 

Now, let’s look at the next step when protecting your intellectual property online. 

Step 2: Use clear contracts to protect your work

Another key step when working with clients, collaborators, or contractors is to always have things in writing. It’s critical to use written contracts that outline the terms of your agreement to protect your business.

Contracts protect you by making it abundantly clear who owns the intellectual property created during the collaboration and under what terms it can be used. As a business owner, writing contracts, no matter how simple, is a great habit to build to ensure you are always protected. 

Yasmine stresses the importance of contracts in her webinar: “Don’t rely on verbal agreements. Always, always get it in writing. A simple contract that outlines the rights and obligations of each party can save you from major headaches down the road.”

If you’re providing digital products or services, make sure your contracts are super clear regarding intellectual property rights. For example, if you’re offering an online course, the contract should have a clause stating that you retain ownership of the course content, even if someone purchases or licenses it. This protects your business from having your ideas being stolen or repurposed. 

Action steps

Now that we’ve emphasized the importance of using clear contracts to protect your work, make sure you follow these steps in your business: 

• Always use written contracts when working with clients or collaborators.
• Include clear terms about who owns the rights to any intellectual property created during the project.
• Use contract templates or consult with a legal professional to ensure your contracts are legally sound.

Now, let’s discuss how to take action when it comes to protecting your intellectual property online. 

Step 3: Monitor for infringement and take action

Once your intellectual property is protected by copyrights and trademarks, the next step is to continuously monitor for potential infringements. 

Online platforms like social media and e-commerce sites make it easy for others to copy or misuse your work, so you need to be vigilant. Because of this, it’s important to know what counts as copyright infringement.

When it comes to copyright infringement, the easiest way to protect your business is to make sure your copyright policy is very clear to customers and to always get written copyright agreements with those you work with. 

“Proactive monitoring is key,” Yasmine advised. “If you’re not actively checking for violations, you could be losing money and control over your intellectual property without even knowing it.”

Luckily, there are several tools available to help you monitor for intellectual property infringements online:

• Google Alerts – Set up alerts for your brand name, course names, or content keywords to get notifications if they appear online without your consent.
• DMCA takedown notices – If someone copies your content and posts it online, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request with the hosting platform to remove the infringing content.

Action steps

Always be wary of your intellectual property online. Engage in these practices to ensure that you’re regularly monitoring for copyright infringement: 

• Set up Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your brand and content.
• Familiarize yourself with the process for filing DMCA takedown notices on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and websites.
• Regularly review social media, blogs, and e-commerce platforms for potential violations.

Now, let’s move to the last step in protecting your intellectual property online.

Step 4: Be proactive, not reactive

Perhaps the most important piece of advice from Yasmine’s webinar is to be proactive about protecting your intellectual property. 

Waiting until you experience an issue can lead to lost revenue, brand dilution, and costly legal battles. Instead, it’s well worth your time to secure your intellectual property from the very start of building your business. You don’t want to feel overwhelmed (or have any regrets) if the unfortunate incident of having your intellectual property stolen becomes a reality. 

Yasmine put it clearly: “It’s much cheaper and easier to protect your intellectual property up front than it is to fight for it once someone else has stolen it. Don’t wait until you’ve built a six-figure business to start thinking about legal protections.”

Being proactive means setting up your legal foundations early, from registering copyrights and trademarks to having contracts in place with clients and collaborators.

Action steps

Remember, it’s better to be proactive and not reactive when running your business. Follow these steps to stay ahead of the game when it comes to creating a business and protecting it: 

• Register your copyrights and trademarks as soon as you create your content and branding.
• Use contracts and licenses to establish clear ownership and usage rights for your intellectual property.
• Regularly audit your intellectual property to ensure it’s fully protected.
• Sign up for copyright courses or watch intellectual property tutorials.
• Review websites that have resources such as Coaches and Company and seek legal advice when needed. 

Related: 18 Best Digital Product Niches in 2024

Case study: Protect your intellectual property online as a course creator

If you’re just starting out with your online course business, the issue of how to protect your intellectual property might seem confusing. You need to know exactly what to copyright, what to trademark, and how the whole process works.

To put everything into action, we’ve provided a step-by-step example, with the help of Yasmine, for understanding how you can protect your intellectual property online as a course creator. 

Course creator spotlight: Meet Sheila 

Sheila is a personal stylist and personal shopper. She realized that working one-on-one with clients meant repeating the same concepts and the same principles over and over again. It also meant she was limited in the number of clients she could take on at one time. To solve the issue, Sheila decided to create an online course.

Sheila calls her course From Blah to Bam. The course guides people through Sheila’s signature methodology for curating a closet that showcases your personality and boosts your confidence. The course includes five video training content modules, as well as a personal style audit workbook and a closet curation checklist and lookbook.

Question: What parts of this course are intellectual property assets and should fall under trademarks and copyrights?

Sheila’s trademark assets

Sheila has a title for her course and she’s providing educational services under this name. The name is original and unique to her business: From Blah To Bam is the name of Sheila’s online course and the label that identifies the source of those services within her digital product. That means that From Blah To Bam is the trademark asset for her online course business.

Sheila needs to identify her trademark and show others the trademark usage. While Sheila is waiting for her trademark to be registered, her course name will look like this: From Blah To Bam™

As it’s her trademark, Sheila has the exclusive right to the use of From Blah To Bam in connection with her types of services and her products.

Sheila’s copyright assets

Sheila is providing students with access to the course content for From Blah To Bam, including workbooks, checklists, lookbooks, and video training modules.

Within Sheila’s course materials, there’s a personal style audit workbook in PDF format. Sheila created this workbook, she designed all of the visual and written content and she created the workbook structure. This is original content belonging to Sheila and that means she has copyright ownership over it.

Sheila also created a closet curation checklist and lookbook. The checklist is in PDF format and it was designed and written by Sheila. Again, all of these materials are assets of Sheila and of her course. In the lookbook, Sheila included photos of certain outfits. She hired a photographer to take and edit the photos. To make sure that Sheila has copyright ownership over these images, the photographer signed a written contract confirming that she owns the content rights. 

The video training for the online course is also a copyright asset that belongs to Sheila. She wrote the content and recorded herself talking on the videos. That means she has the exclusive rights to the use of this video content.

As her business grows, Sheila is going to create many more assets that will be her intellectual property, including:

• Promotional graphics
• Photos
• Social media captions
• Blog posts
• Emails
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Audio

Sheila has exclusive rights to the use of her content to publish it, display it, repurpose it, create derivative works, sell it, and license it to others. By selling the course and allowing others to enroll and access that content, Sheila is creating a copyright license in and of itself. She’s providing access to her content for students.

She’s not saying, “hey, you can access this and sell it” or “you can share it with others” – her license to those students is very limited as they can only use it and access it themselves. This might be for a set period of time or for an unlimited time. It depends on the terms of the license.

With this combination of trademarked assets and copyrighted assets, Sheila is protecting her intellectual property online.

Related: 8 Steps to Building an Online Course Business (+ Business Plan Template)

Best practices to protect your intellectual property online

We’ve covered the 4 essential steps you should take as an online entrepreneur, content creator, or educator when it comes to protecting your intellectual property online. However, there are still a ton of valuable tips to cover, including best practices that will mitigate the risk of your intellectual property being stolen or replicated. 

Below we’ve shared some tips from Yasmine and Rosezena to make protecting your intellectual property online easy and straightforward.

1. Avoid generic or descriptive names

When you’re choosing a name for your business or online course, it’s a good practice to steer clear of any names that are too generic or descriptive.

To use the example of Sheila’s styling business, Sheila should avoid calling her course something directly related to personal styling such as Your Personal Style Course or The Closet Makeover Course.

You can tell if a trademark is descriptive or generic by asking yourself if your competitors need to use this language to describe their own products or services. If the answer is yes, you should probably look for a more unique name to be able to protect your intellectual property online. 

This also helps you avoid trademark infringement. With Sheila’s example, tweaking her business name slightly or changing something minor is not enough. Calling Sheila’s company From Blah To Boom or From Blah To Blam is still infringing on the intellectual property of the company called From Blah To Bam. The standard for trademark infringement is not whether or not there’s an identical match, it’s whether or not there’s a likelihood of confusion.

2. Watermark your content

To protect your intellectual property online, add your name and website URL or watermark to your training videos and documents. That way, if your content has been shared illegally, it has your logo and website so anyone will be able to see that it is your content you created. 

3. Print and mail your content to yourself

One of the easiest ways to prove that your content actually belongs to you, is to simply print out your whole course (including the curriculum, lesson plans, and content) and then mail it to yourself. 

Now you have tracked and recorded delivery of your intellectual property, just be sure to never open it! If anyone ever reproduces your content and you find yourself in the middle of court for a legal dispute, you have dated evidence of when your content was created and how long it has been around for. Simple, yet effective.

4. Time stamp your content

If you’re sharing online content publicly, make sure there is a timestamp on all the content you produce. This is the best kind of proof that you published something first, as dates don’t lie. 

For example, every blog post has a ‘published’ date on it. Every YouTube video, social media status updates, and live stream video shows the original post date. If a replica piece of content comes out after yours was published, it’s obvious who got it from who.

5. Show your face

If you are a content creator or online educator, it’s a great practice to show your face in videos. This is one of the best ways to protect your content as everyone will clearly know that you’re the expert. 

Regardless of who is watching it and how they obtained it, people will see your face, hear your words, and view your name being presented to the audience – which means that you’re the only one who can get credit for your work. 

6. Make your business common knowledge 

If you have a saying that is unique to your business, or even an approach or process you consider to be yours, make sure that everyone knows it. 

To protect your unique genius, find a way to make your business saying or process so big and loud that no matter where and how it’s used, everybody knows that it’s yours. Say it in every video, blog, social media post, and include it on your website, in your email signature, in interviews, and everywhere you can in the public eye. Make it undeniably yours, but allow it to ‘belong’ to whoever would like to identify themselves with it too –  after all, this is how you build a community around your brand.

7. Watch for duplicates of your content

As we mentioned, it’s important to continuously monitor for the illegal usage or distribution of your content online. 

Google Alerts, which is completely free, is a tool that allows you to enter in various search terms, such as your name, certain words, and phrases that you use. Once set up, Google will email you whenever those words or phrases are published online – then you can check them out.

You can also use plagiarism checkers to see if your work has been duplicated anywhere. For example, Copyscape allows you to insert the URL to your blog post and it will then scan the web for matching content.

8. Have a clear copyright policy

You can create your own policies to help guide and educate the public about what is appropriate when it comes to using your intellectual property. Although this won’t necessarily protect you legally, you can help people understand how to share your content the right way.

Simply write up a very clear list of what is ‘okay’ and ‘not okay’ when it comes to using, sharing, and reproducing your content. It’s helpful to give guidelines such as the types of things people need to ask your permission for and what they can do without written permission.

9. Use in-built flagging tools

YouTube, for example, has built-in flagging tools on their platform. So, if someone has used your content without your permission, there’s a process to flag the copyright infringement immediately. 

Submit a takedown request by filling out the form available online. If your claim is found to be true, you could be entitled to the ad revenue generated from the content, so the profits come back to you – a big plus for protecting your intellectual property online!

10. Think about the value of your content

Unfortunately, a lot of intellectual property problems arise from people accessing content by sharing their login details with others. This is an especially big problem for course creators. Over time, this can result in losing a significant amount of income.

However, if you make your course highly interactive, with private exclusive Facebook groups, discussion areas, one-on-one coaching elements, face-to-face training elements, live Q&A webinars and more, your course suddenly becomes valuable to just one person – the original enrollee. 

This means that the most valuable parts of your course can’t be shared. This method won’t eliminate sharing but including these ‘unshareable’ elements reduces the likelihood of your intellectual property ending up in the hands of someone who did not purchase it – making your course more valuable to your students.

11. Seek professional legal advice

When it comes to learning how to protect your intellectual property online, when in doubt, the best advice is to consult a legal professional.

If you’re able to hire or book a consultation with a lawyer at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, it will be a worthwhile investment in your business. They will be able to conduct a legal audit and flag any potential issues with your intellectual property. You can then move forward with a clear plan and a strategy for how to protect your intellectual property online in the future.

Related: Best Equipment & Software For Creating Online Courses

Useful resources for legal protection 

When it comes to protecting your intellectual property online, we say the more you know, the better. It’s always a good idea to have some resources in your back pocket and to stay up-to-date on legal policies.

Below we’ve shared our favourite resources that you’ll want to bookmark – these resources are extremely useful for legal protection when it comes to your intellectual property. 

• USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) – Check the USPTO to see if there are any companies out there using similar business names to you. For example, you can search for the name of your course and variations of those names, too. Even if you’re not based in the U.S., if you market to U.S. consumers it’s a good thing to check. Every country has their own version of this database – make sure that you check the database for the country where your business is based and where the majority of your customers come from.

 

• U.S. Copyright Office – The U.S. copyright office allows you to register your intellectual property, search copyright records, obtain licenses, and record transfers of copyright ownership. This website holds a ton of valuable information for all your copyright needs. Again, every country has their own version of this database, so be sure to check it out.

• Coaches and Company – Coaches and Company, founded by Yasmine Salem Hamdan, is a lifesaver when it comes to creating written legal contracts to protect your intellectual property and business. They provide customizable, easy-to-read, lawyer-created contracts (without the law firm price tag) for you to get your legal ducks in a row. Their wide range of legal contract templates are downloadable and tailored for digital business owners.

• R.J. Pierce Law Group – It’s always handy to have a lawyer in your back pocket, especially one that specializes in intellectual property rights for online businesses. Created by Rosezena Pierce, who has provided her legal advice throughout this blog, R.J. Pierce Law Group offers outside counsel with their team of experienced attorneys for securing and defending a business’s intellectual property rights. 

Copyright courses and intellectual property tutorials 

If you want to dive even deeper into learning how to protect your business, we’ve listed our top online copyright courses and intellectual property tutorials that will teach you in-depth how to protect your intellectual property online. 

Cultural Enterprises Academy: Copyright Essentials

Run by the Association for Cultural Enterprises in the U.K., the Cultural Enterprises Academy Copyright Essentials course offers comprehensive training to cultural and heritage organizations, including a basic course on U.K. copyright law. The course is designed to help you learn how to confidently create, commission, and use content.

Canadian Copyright Law

Specially designed for non-lawyers, Copyrightlaws.com has a range of online courses on the topic of copyright, including how to obtain permission, legally using images, and the basics of Canadian copyright law. This is especially helpful if your business is based in Canada or if you’re working with Canadian content creators, graphic designers, or other businesses.

Developing a Copyright Policy or Guidelines

Copyrightlaws.com also has a super useful course to help you develop a copyright policy for your business. This course includes modules on simplifying copyright in your guidelines, tips for educating others, and knowledge on how to obtain copyright permissions.

Related: 62 Ways To Market Your Online Course & Increase Sales in 2024

Conclusion

As you’ve learned, protecting your intellectual property online is essential for anyone looking to monetize their expertise and scale their business. 

No matter what kind of content you’re producing for your business – whether it’s training videos, downloadable resources, photographs, or anything else – you need to know how to protect your intellectual property online. This is the bread and butter of your business, and your intellectual property is how you make money. 

By securing your copyrights and trademarks, using clear contracts, monitoring for infringements, and being proactive, you can ensure that your business is protected and positioned for long-term success. 

Trust us, if you make these 4 steps to protecting your intellectual property online a priority, your business and your peace of mind will thank you later. 

Use Thinkific to create, market, and sell online courses, communities, and memberships — all from a single platform.

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This blog was originally published in April 2022, it’s since been updated in February 2025 to include the newest information.