Op-ed | Your brand is an asset. Are you protecting it like one?

I moderated a panel called “$10M, $100M and Beyond: What the Most Successful Owners Know,” with Brittany Holloway (“Lawyer Britt,” who built and sold her own law firm), Alex Petrone of Rockefeller Global Family Office, and Stacy Wang of Blackstone Private Credit. We talked about building a company that runs without you, planning for a sale before you need one, and building wealth beyond the business.

As the IP attorney in the room, I kept thinking about the piece most founders skip. So that is where I want to start this column.

The legal piece usually comes last

Revenue, hiring and growth come first. IP comes later, usually when something breaks.

Sometimes what breaks is a copycat. I’ve had brands come to us with sales down 40% on Amazon because of knockoffs they already knew about. They had someone doing takedowns, but there was no strategy. By the time they called, it was a million-dollar problem.

Sometimes it is a buyer, a lender or an investor. That is the conversation most founders are not having early enough.

Your brand is a balance-sheet asset

Your brand is not a logo and a vibe. It is an asset. Buyers, lenders and investors pay for what a company actually owns. That means registered trademarks, protected IP and clean contracts.

Just because you use it does not mean you own it.

I see founders who have spent years building a name, a following and a product people love, and the trademark was never filed. Or it was filed in the wrong name. Or the contracts with the designer, the manufacturer or the co-founder never addressed who owns what. None of that shows up on day one. All of it shows up in due diligence.

Three things to do now

1. Register early and strategically. File for the marks that actually drive your business, in the name of the right entity, and in the markets where you sell or plan to sell.
2. Know what you own. Make sure your contracts with designers, manufacturers, freelancers and co-founders say who owns the work. If they don’t, fix it before someone asks.
3. Check in every 6 to 12 months. Your business changes. New products, new markets, new channels. Build protection alongside the business so you are not scrambling to register in 20 tier-one markets while the fight is already happening.

None of this is complicated, and it costs a fraction of what the cleanup costs.

Protect what you built

The owners who reach $10 million, $100 million and beyond think about the sale years ahead. They think about what the business will look like to someone on the other side of the table. Your IP is a big part of that picture.

Protect what you built. It is part of what you are selling.

In this column, I’ll cover the IP questions I hear most from founders, brands and creators, from trademarks and copycats to AI and ownership, explained in plain English.