Kinds Of Intellectual Property
The number of certain types of legal monopolies over creations of mind, both artistic and commercial, and the related fields of law is called Intellectual property (IP). Under intellectual property law, proprietors have sole rights to some intangible assets like musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries, and inventions; and words. phrases, symbols, and designs. Intellectual property has been divided into four main categories namely patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Copyrights give lawful rights to both unpublished and published original works. They protect the ownership of pieces like musical scores, poetry, films, novels etc. It gives legal rights to the owner to make use of the expression of his or her idea in addition to reproducing, giving away, exhibiting or even selling it with complete freedom within the time decided by law. The owner has an authority over his work for more than 50 years, which is valid even after his demise and any unlawful use of the creation within this time is actionable.
Patents on the other hand are lawful and official rights that allow an inventor to prevent others from manufacturing or selling his or her invention. They offer safety not just for technological breakthroughs and scientific theories but also for new discoveries in the field of biology. In most countries, patent cover is available for a limited period of 20 years and the inventor loses his sole ownership over the invention after the expiry of this time span.
Trade secrets are proprietary information that can be used by the firm to defeat its competitors. A trade secret could be anything ranging from a client database with the contact information of most valuable customers to a unique recipe or even some secret research. Generally, trade secrets are not governed by the state machinery but by strict internal standards and policies of the particular firm. The usual way of securing trade secrets is by allowing access to only a few key executives and not everyone, or by depositing it safely in a bank together with other valuable items and documents.
Trademarks include words, symbols or designs that are used in the context of a particular brand or product in order to distinguish it from products of competitors. Trademarks create an exclusive brand identity for a firm and generate quick recall in the minds of customers. Generally, a trademark registration remains valid for a decade after which it has to be renewed.
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Suggestions On Choosing A Patent Lawyer
While in a lot of other areas legal intervention is needed only after disputes crop up, a patent lawyer is useful from the time you start thinking about applying for a patent. The primary duties of a patent lawyer are to assist clients obtain patents, recommend measures to secure the patents and if required, defend the right of the patentee in case of an infringement.
The patent application and registration process is generally a very time consuming and tedious one. Hence, the necessity for an expert and knowledgeable lawyer is felt keenly. However, before you actually select and engage a lawyer, you should assess his experience in dealing with patents, and if he’ll be able to understand the creative work that you are patenting. For instance, a lawyer who hails from a field like software, may not be very knowledgeable about the patenting needs for medical products.
A second point that you must think about is the success rate of the lawyer you wish to employ for patent application submission and related processing. If you can review information about how many patents that have been given to clients of the lawyer then you will have a sufficient idea of his capabilities. By doing this, you can determine how effective the lawyer is and if you have a high likelihood of success in your patent application because only a competent patent lawyer can make sure that your application does not have any errors.
Of the number of upcoming lawyers in the industry who deal with patents, it should be an easy task to identify one who is competent enough to deal with your needs and whose charges are not too expensive.
Moreover, you should also try to stick with the same lawyer right from the filing stage to licensing and promotion of your product or idea, as this lawyer would be aware of the intricacies of your patent, and he or she will be much more successful in handling any legal problems that might arise at a future date.
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Various Kinds Of Intellectual Property
When we talk about property, it is not only the tangible things such as homes, structures, land, currency etc that are protected by law. Other kinds of property which are non- material in form also exist. They are termed intellectual property and these are also protected by the law. The three main types of intellectual property rights are patents, trademarks and copyrights.
Copyrights are intellectual property pertaining to rights of the creator over his or her original creation. This right may be awarded for songs, films, videos and other types of creative expressions and not only the literary or published material. The copyright accords the sole right of ownership over the piece in question besides rights to get financial advantages resulting from the work.
Trademarks afford intellectual property privileges which aim at preventing duplication and violation of graphical representations registered by someone for his own products, and they help a customer easily tell the source of a product. They safeguard the trademark owners from being economically exploited by unscrupulous elements.
The third kind of intellectual property right, termed as patent, safeguards the rights of inventors in their novel and beneficial invention. A patent is valid for a predefined span and allows the holder exclusive right to use and commercially exploit his or her invention.
Some other, less often enforced intellectual property rights are also safeguarded by the law. Some examples of other kinds are traditional understanding cultivated by natives of a specific region that is distinctive only to that area; trade secrets that include business secrets, for example, KFC’s recipe; and positional pointers that are a variant of trademarks used for products arising from a specific part of the world, for instance Champagne.
Though these forms of intellectual property are separate from each other there are certain commonalities between the three. All three are fully admissible under the law and the rightful owner can take legal recourse to enforce his right and claim reparation for any misuse.
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Use Of Trademarks On The Internet
In this period of extensive internet use, trademark laws gain particular significance in cyberspace, particularly in terms of trademarks for domain names. A trademark becomes essential if your customers are going to recognize you and the products or services that you provide solely by your domain name.
The moment you are a trademark holder of a domain name, you can take legal action against a company for using a similar name and thus confusing people into believing that you, the genuine trademark owner, are in some way connected to their web site.
However, you need to do a comprehensive search for similar domain names in cyberspace before filing your trademark application, in order to prevent any violations. The research should investigate the existence of similar marks that have a close resemblance in appearance, pronunciation or meaning to the domain name you have chosen. It is vital to register a domain only after properly checking that it does not violate any trademarks.
For achieving this, it is advisable to hire the services of a cyber law practitioner, who can guide you in your online trademark related issues. This can greatly help in avoiding future disputes related to possible infringement.
You should take into consideration the fact that the domain name you are intending to trademark should be more than a mere web address to draw people to your site. It must be an identity that distinguishes your services from others.
Other than domain name infringement, there is a new menace of keyword infringement one the web. It basically means infringement of trademarks and their unlawful use as keywords through posting of online ads through advertisement services like Yahoo and Google, with the motive of puzzling the consumer.
If the online ads help in boosting the sales of the trademark owner, it is not a violation but the problem is created when the infringer starts making use of such ads for marketing his own goods for a commercial advantage.
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Considerations Before Filing A Patent Application
A patent helps you to safeguard your inventions from immoral people, who can derive benefit from your efforts. However, for protecting your invention, you are needed to register it with the patent authorities in your country.
Applying for a patent can be quite a difficult task. Mentioned below are a few points to assist you in raising the chances of approval of your patent application.
To start with, your patent must satisfy the NUN rule of novelty, utility and non-obviousness. This in turn means that your inventions must be innovative and be able to capture the attention of interested parties and have some commercial value, so that it is not rejected by the authority for being worthless. Your invention must be patentable in the sense that it must not be a minor variant of a current commercial product or have only a trivial, short term market worth. Further, it should not be simple for other members of that specific commercial community to reproduce it in an openly evident way.
You are also required to provide all important details of your invention at the time of filing the application. In some cases, you might also be needed to incorporate designs of your invention in addition to the comprehensive description. This is essential because unless you have communicated the finer details of your development, the authorities will not be able to evaluate it exhaustively and compare it against current products and other pending applications. A failure in doing this can even result in a rejection of your invention even before a thorough assessment has been started.
The process of getting a patent is mostly lengthy and complex on account of the detailed evaluation that it involves. Hence, it is advised to hire a lawyer, who has been engaged in intellectual property cases with a specialization in patents and has a good grip on the subject matter. This would not only conserve time and effort, but also lower the chances of your patent application being disapproved.
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Safeguarding Your Intellectual Property
Even intangible property like ideas possessing commercial worth require protection from persons who might want to misuse them for their benefit without the permission of the creator or owner. Intellectual property or IP rights allow you to safeguard your idea legally as well as to take action against violators. Some of the alternatives for safeguarding your interest in your intellectual property are mentioned below.
The first thing that you should do is to withhold critical information with respect to the idea that is in your thought or in a tangible medium. You must be very careful while sharing your idea with people, especially in public or on internet. If you want to share your idea with your colleagues by means of email, you must make sure that your account is protected by a strong password.
It is also advisable to have the fundamental understanding of laws dealing with intellectual property. This knowledge will aid you in shaping your company’s policies to protect your intellectual property and take actions against those who try to take undue advantage of it. One such instance is when you engage a third party to develop your idea. You must legally bind them to not disclose or use the provided information for any other purpose. The proper way of doing this is to make them sign non-disclosure agreements, which will help you take legal measures if required.
However, it is also crucial to engage a legal expert to find out the detailed provisions available to you to safeguard your idea. The related laws can often be quite complex and it is advisable to depend on an intellectual property lawyer for dealing with such issues. The lawyer will then let you know the ways of patenting or copyrighting your work, so that no one can infringe it.
You should also remember that the best time to engage an IP lawyer and apply for IP protection is when your idea is in the initial stages. The sooner an application for your patent or copyright is filed, the lesser will be the hassle at a later time.
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Types Of Trademarks
Trademark safety is granted for terms, logos and graphics that identify products of one firm as distinct from others. The main purpose of trademarks is to ensure that the consumers are not subjected to any confusion with respect to the origin of the product.
One of the key needs for a trademark is that it should be different, which means it should be unique and recognizable. The distinctiveness of a trademark can be assessed by placing it in one of the trademark groups – suggestive, descriptive, generic and arbitrary.
A descriptive mark is one that provides description of a product in terms of its quality or features like odour, functionality, dimensions etc. Although some descriptive marks that have taken a secondary meaning in the marketplace, which the consumers can recognize as originating from a specific manufacturer, can be trademarked, this is not the general case as descriptive marks are rarely exclusive.
Suggestive marks are pointers to a particular product aspect or quality. However, it is usually the case that the mark and the product do not show any obvious relation and the customers might need to guess the link between the two. For example, ‘Hush Puppies’ is a popular brand name that markets shoes that guarantee comfort and protect your feet from becoming sore. It is interesting to note that ‘barking dogs’ is a slang for sore feet in some regions, especially in the US.
Fanciful marks on the contrary have no relationship whatsoever with the any quality or feature of the item. For example, the use of trademark ‘Apple’ with a symbol of a half eaten apple is not at all linked to the computers marketed under the mark. Fanciful marks are those that are not used in existing languages and have come from the imagination of the manufacturer, such as ‘Exxon’.
Lastly, generic marks are ones which represent a general category of items like ‘olive oil’ and are granted no safety under the existing trademark laws.
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Up Your Business Value By Leveraging On IP
If you look at the books of large companies these days you will discover that their intellectual property (IP) adds a enormous amount to the balance sheet. In fact most companies fixed assets are infinitesimal in comparison to the brand and IP value. This tells us something very interesting – yes – how much more would your company be worth if you invested more in intellectual property identification and registration?
When a business strategically identifies, maintains and secures its IP rights then this can plainly have a major impact on the business in terms of its overall operation, including its ability to attract investors, enter into particular business partnership, and in the end increase its value when it comes to sale or company merger.
Large companies who have mega-brands like McDonalds and Pepsi are often quoted when it comes to their brand value as out-valuing their fixed assets hundreds of times, yet it is easy to forget how these companies also became so huge.
We live in an information world now. Information businesses like Google can be valued at a few billion dollars a few years after creation only because information is now so valuable. Information is a tradable asset only when it is protected by intellectual property laws and other laws. Every business, big or small should take intellectual property seriously. It is one of the best investments literally you can make with a company if the intellectual property value is capitalized within the business and added to the balance sheet.
It is highly recommended for companies of all sizes to be aware of intellectual property issues and create particular schemes that will proactively ensure that their IP will at all times be properly legally protected.
Here are a few areas to help you start focusing on by first identifying the areas that you are creating intellectual property in:
1. Trademarks – these protect parts of your overall brand such as mottoes, pictures, names.
2. Copyrights – these cover the trade protection of expressive items such as documents, books, images, video recordings, audio recordings etc.
3. Trade secrets – these protect proprietary information, internal know-how, systems and operations that are deemed to give you a business competitive edge
4. Patents and industrial designs which protect particular types of ideas and inventions and processes
Considering the above items the first step that you need to do is identifying existing IP within your company. You may be amazed by how much you may have. Once all sources of a company’s IP have been identified, processes should be put in place that enable the company to easily keep track of all existing intellectual property (IP) and all new intellectual property (IP) . Then someone needs to be given the responsibility to manage the intellectual property.
Once the key intellectual property (IP) has been identified then the next step is to look at what should be registered to protect it legally. This is where a great patent lawyer comes in to play. Good IP lawyers don’t come cheap but considering the value that is created then it pays off to invest for all your major intellectual property (IP).
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