Protecting My Ideas
I am interviewing for a large company is a few weeks, this particular division is only 2 years and has no relative marketing department. They are looking to bring me in and do a presentation on what their hypothetical marketing and communication strategy should be for 2007. I have no problem with this, and see it as an opportunity to really show off what I know.
I was advised by some marketing professionals to protect my ideas as intellectual property, how do I incorporate that into my PowerPoint presentation?, since my information is truly not copyright.
If you wrote the words yourself, and the work is solely your own composition, even if based on other available works for research purposes, you can copyright it. Put the copyright symbol on each page, followed by your name and the year. You can, and should, also place a disclaimer on the cover page that this plan is hypothetical, solely for the purpose of this specific interview with this specific company, and that its presentation does not constitute an authorization of its use, blah, blah, blah. You can probably find the verbiage to use on one of the free legal sites.
And you might want to think carefully about how much detail you want to go into. If you do go for detail, only do that for a small sample section, not the whole thing. Copyright or not, disclaimers or not, you' re never going to prove they took your ideas away from you if they don' t hire you. For example, let' s say you suggest that they hold a huge PR event and sponsor a Bingo night. They don' t hire you (maybe they don' t hire anyone). 2 years later, you see in the paper they' re holding their 2nd annual bingo night. You complain. They say "hey, Bingo isn' t an original idea that you own. Bob in the mailroom suggested it before we even interviewed people." You' d have to take them to court, 50/50 that you' d get anywhere with it and your damages would be a couple thousand dollars for the idea at most. So, don' t share anything that you would be crushed over if they do weasle it away from you. Its a tough line to walk in giving enough to show you can do the job and not giving away the store.
Excellent advice; follow it and you won' t need to be so worried about them stealing your ideas! You are right to be concerned about this; many a graphic designer has seen his/her "proposal concepts" end up in a company' s brochures after the proposal was not accepted!
How about encrypting the presentation and only unlocking it to show it in person? No hard copies. Put "Proprietary - Protected by USC $%^&" (whatever the trade secrets law is) on each page.
I put this on a lot of material, it will either put the fear in you or put you to sleep. | |
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