SUCCESSFUL entrepreneurs are being enticed to showcase their products on TV programmes such as Dragons' Den - unaware that they may be putting their inventions at risk.

Failing to properly protect their intellectual property costs UK businesses over £9 billion every year due to theft and fraud.

Many businesses fall victim to copycat inventors looking to take full credit for someone else's work.

Paul Tomlinson, intellectual property law expert at Manchester law firm Berg Legal, said: "If an entrepreneur does not take steps to legally protect their ideas before disclosing them to others, there is a risk that they will not be able to stop someone taking an idea and using it as their own, regardless of the amount of time or money an entrepreneur has spent developing it."