Protecting Your Own Intellectual Property?

"Your Own IP?" is one of the hot threads at CGTalk this week. The main question is how to protect your own work in progress IP (Intellectual Property).

It's not an easy task, right?
Here is a quote of Ali Ismail (I agreed with):

I haven't tried to register an IP for movie or a character yet but I had brief encounters with lawyers regarding trademarks and IPs in general and from that I can say things are pretty complicated.

for example regarding a trademark registration, lets say you have a studio name or any brand name for that matter, when you register that one you have to choose in what field to register it and in which country, the fields are too many and the countries are also too many :)

meaning its very very costly to register a worldwide brand or trademark.for example you could register a studio name in the USA but it doesn't mean that no one could use the same name and logo to sell Beer for example in the same country or to make an exactly similar studio in Berlin.or in another instance if you register your characters and someone in your country steals you idea, changes the look and name of the character slightly, it would be a costly matter to prove that he stole or damaged your IP.

in short, my advice is to keep your concepts and ideas as hidden as possible until the release. find a cheap way to register at least in your country so that you have some form of starting point and hope and wish that no big company will have interest in taking your ideas because you have little chance of standing against their lawyers because the more expensive your lawyers are the more legal and righteous you are in the eye of "justice".