<aside> 🎯 The goal of this checklist is to ensure that you are not infringing on any existing rights from other companies.

</aside>

<aside> ‼️ This is not legal advice. We recommend you seek advice from a legal counsel in your country of incorporation.

</aside>

This involves checking for existing:

1. Patents that protect inventions and innovation that you want to use in your product
2. Trade secrets that protect proprietary information that you might use to build a product/business
3. Copyrights that protect the rights of artistic work that you might use in your product
4. Trademarks that protect brand-defining elements
5. Components that limit your marketing

🔒 Patents

• [ ] Ensure that the technology you want to use in your product is not already patented by doing an initial patent search on Google Patents.
• [ ] As a student or academic researcher ensure that the university has no rights to your inventions during your time at University.

🤐 Trade secrets

• [ ] Founders and early employees have no existing non-compete clauses.
• [ ] The knowledge needed to build the product/business is not protected by any existing NDA

©️ Copyrights

• [ ] The artistic material (e.g. images, audio files) you are using in your product or website is not protected by copyrights. If they are make sure you license them.