If you’ve invested time and money into your business, creating a line or products or services, you want to make sure business is well protected. Whether it’s someone copying your product or a client trying to skip out on a bill, you need to know how to legally protect your business and to enforce your rights as a company owner. Stay safe with this guide.
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On Your Website
Start off by protecting your business and your website content. Your company website needs to have in place a privacy policy, a page of terms and conditions and a proper website disclaimer. These each does different jobs to protect you.
If you ask site visitors to sign up or a newsletter or to fill in a contact form, you must have a privacy policy in place. This privacy policy will tell anyone who gives you an email address or other personal data when you are collecting this information, why you’re collecting it and how their data will be used.
A website disclaimer tells any site visitor who you are, what your company does and why you’re the one to do it. You need a terms and conditions page to set out the rules of your website, for example, any regulations around sales, use of your content or other rules you may have.
For Your Products
If you sell products that you’ve created for the company, you will need to protect them from being copied by a competitor. You can do this with a trademark. Trademarks are used to identify and guarantee a product or a service as belonging to you. This means that consumers won’t be confused about who provides the product. You will have the exclusive right to put the mark on products and services, preventing any others from doing the same. If you do find someone is copying your services, you will be better able to prevent it. If you sell on Facebook and have found someone infringing on your copyright, you can report a counterfeit on Facebook.
Prevent Client Relationship Failures
If you have clients, you want to be sure they can’t suddenly decide to pay their bills late (or not at all) or decide to drop your company in the middle of a project that you’re working on together. Make sure that any phone conversations are followed up with written communication that can be traced, so you have a record of any agreements made. Don’t start any work for someone without a solid contract in place first.
Your contract should state very clearly what is and is not included in the agreement between you and your client. It should also lay out any payment terms, including due dates and repercussions for late payment. Include your disclaimer and your company policies. By having a proper contract in place, you can refer back to it if there is a problem or disagreement with your client. It will be much harder for clients to back out of paying on term, choosing not to pay or otherwise break the terms of your agreement. They’ll be bound by the terms of the contract, protecting you and your business.