When considering your estate, if you are a business owner, you might want to discuss how to protect your brand and intellectual assets during the estate process via trademarks and other legal registrations. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts makes provision for individuals and organizations to trademark devices, symbols, words and names that identify their business or goods.

Trademarks and copyrights not only preserve your brand-related assets during your lifetime, but they can also protect those assets for your heirs. Even decades later, trademarks and other legal vehicles have protected heirs from other companies or individuals who might purposely or inadvertently steal or plagiarize ideas, designs or products.

One example we’ve personally dealt with involved a manufacturing client. The client found out that another company was making a product that was substantially similar to a product that our client had copyright on. We were able to prove that the other company could have accessed the original product, which provided a basis for a case that the product was indeed inappropriately copied. Not only does that protect our client from future copies by the other company, but the other company had to pay restitution.

Our law firm handles both estate planning and administration as well as trademark and copyright issues. By combining numerous legal skills and processes, you can take advantage of multiple vehicles to protect all of your assets — even those that don’t have current monetary value. In many cases, it is these assets — ideas, writings and products — that become the basis of your legacy in later life and beyond, making it important to work to protect them now before anyone else attempts to use them.