Intellectual Property Rights
What are Intellectual property rights (IPR) and how can you protect yours?
Intellectual property (IP) is any original creation of the human mind/imagination such as artistic, literary, technical, or scientific creation.
Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the legal rights given to the inventor or creator to protect their invention or creation for a certain length of time.
The legal framework for IPR protection enables enforcement action to be taken, against infringers and counterfeiters who may attempt to take the intellectual creations of others without permission.
The trend of granting patents started in the fourteenth century and the first known copyrights appeared in Italy, with Venice considered the cradle of IP systems.
The 4 types of IP in the UK are patents, trademarks, copyrights, and designs.
See - www.gov.uk
Patents
A patent for an invention is granted by government to the inventor, giving the inventor the right to stop others, for a limited period, from making, using, or selling the invention without their permission.
There are three types of patents - Utility, Design, and Plant.
Here are some examples of what cannot be patented:
• a discovery, scientific theory, or mathematical method,
• an aesthetic creation,
• a scheme, rule, or method for performing a mental act, playing a game, or doing business, or a computer program,
• a presentation of information,
• a procedure for surgical or therapeutic treatment, or diagnosis, to be practised on humans or animals.
Disadvantages of patents:
• Details of the invention are publicly disclosed. ...
• The application process can be lengthy and time-consuming. ...
• A patent can be an expensive process even if it is unsuccessful. ...
• A patent must be maintained, and there are costs associated with that.
You can renew your UK patent for up to a maximum of 20 years from its filing date (through payment of a fee). After that point the invention becomes part of the public domain. This means the invention no longer has patent protection and is no longer off limits, so anyone can make, use, or sell the invention without infringement.
The only way to extend protection of a patent beyond 20 years is to invent and patent an improvement to the originally patented invention.
See - https://www.gov.uk
See - https://www.gov.uk
Trademarks
A trademark is a sign capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one enterprise from those of other enterprises. Almost anything can be a trademark if it indicates the source of your goods and services. It could be a word, slogan, design, or combination of these. It could even be a sound, a scent, or a colour.
Note - Trademarking sound is very difficult. Commonplace sounds can't be trademarked - sounds such as alarm clocks and other electronic signals for example. Only sounds that are (a) sufficiently distinctive/arbitrary/unique but (b) not overly short or long can be trademarked. As a consequence there are very few trademarked sounds, but, some successful examples include McDonald’s I’m lovin’ it jingle and Metro-Goldwin-Mayer Lion Corporation’s iconic lion roar.
The Four Types of Trademarks are:
• Generic - weakest
• Descriptive
• Suggestive
• Arbitrary or Fanciful (made up word) - strongest
Examples of famous trademarks include APPLE, COCA-COLA, MCDONALDS and NIKE.
When you register your trademark, you’ll be able to:
• take legal action against anyone who uses your brand without your permission, including counterfeiters
• put the ® symbol next to your brand - to show that it’s yours and warn others against using it
• sell and license your brand
A trademark lasts 10 years. You must renew your trademark (through payment of a fee) every 10 years, for it to stay in force.
See - https://www.gov.uk
Copyright
Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission.
You get copyright protection automatically - you don’t have to apply or pay a fee. There isn’t a register of copyright works in the UK.
You automatically get copyright protection when you create:
• original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic work, including illustration and photography
• original non-literary written work, such as software, web content and databases
• sound and music recordings
• film and television recordings
• broadcasts
• the layout of published editions of written, dramatic, and musical works
You can mark your work with the copyright symbol (©), your name and the year of creation. Whether you mark the work or not doesn’t affect the level of protection you have.
Copyright prevents people from:
• copying your work
• distributing copies of it, whether free of charge or for sale
• renting or lending copies of your work
• performing, showing, or playing your work in public
• making an adaptation of your work
• putting it on the internet
Copyright lasts between 25 – 70 years
See - https://www.gov.uk
Designs
In the context of intellectual property, the "design" of a product is generally its shape or ornamentation applied to it, although the exact definition varies between different types of protection. Essentially, the design of a product relates to its appearance, rather than to technical principles of its construction or operation.
A UK registered design gives its owner the exclusive right in the UK to make, use, sell, import, and export any product embodying the design, if it is a shape, or bearing the design if it is ornamentation. These rights extend to similar designs which do not produce a substantially different impression on the informed user.
The design which is the subject of an application for registration must meet two criteria.
It must:
• be novel; and
• possess individual character.
A design registration cannot protect features of a design which are solely dictated by the product's technical function, or features which are required to permit the product to be connected to or placed in, around or against another product so that either product may perform its function. However, a design which serves the purpose of allowing the assembly of modular products may be registered.
It is not allowable to register designs which incorporate protected emblems, for example, the Olympic symbols, Royal arms, and national flags. Nor is it allowable to incorporate third parties' trademarks or copyrighted material.
Design registration can last up to 25 years, but to do so it must be renewed (through payment of a fee) at five-yearly intervals.
See - https://www.gov.uk
Intellectual Property Office UK
