• One of the main advantages of establishing a joint venture rather than a partnership is that your business maintains its independence both during and after your participation in the joint venture relationship.
• This independence is often a strength of your business. Your business may have intellectual property that you will need to protect from other joint venture participants by registering rights such as trademarks and patents. Unregistered rights can be protected through confidentiality or copyright agreements.

This protected intellectual property is also one of the keys to success of a joint venture and can be crucial in attracting joint venture partners. It is too risky to have unprotected intellectual property on the grounds that you consider it unlikely to be valuable to another party.