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The Thieves Are Out There: Protect Your Intellectual Property
As a writer, trainer, educator, speaker, consultant, or entertainer, you create valuable intellectual property (IP). Perhaps you’ve found clever ways to leverage your IP into diverse forms, each of which provides value to the recipients, grows your reach and reputation, and perhaps generates revenue. Now you must try to protect your IP against inappropriate usage. Most people are sensible, honest, and fair when it comes to these matters. Sadly, a few are not.
After writing for publication for nearly 50 years and being a public speaker for more than 30, I’ve had both amusing and dismaying experiences in which people have misappropriated my IP. You can’t protect yourself against all such offenses, but here I share some of my experiences so that you can be alert for similar issues with your own creations.
The Paraphrasing
I once read an article about a software quality technique called inspection, a form of technical peer review, in a respected software journal. The author was a man of unimpeachable integrity, a titan of the industry. Someone else, whom I didn’t know, had written an accompanying two-page sidebar that presented an overview of software peer reviews. As I read the sidebar, I found myself nodding along, agreeing with what it said. Eventually, I realized why: I had…
