Patentable inventions are New and Not obvious and solve a
technical problem
With patents, you can exclude other from making, using, selling
or importing your invention
The Intellectual property office (IPO) grants rights (patents) for
novel inventions
20 years legal protection
Expensive/complicated to obtain
You can use patents to:
Add value to your business
Enhance your brand image
Negotiate financing
Patents have some disadvantages though:
Time consuming to obtain
Designs become publicly available
Patents are often not that effective as patents are copied via legal loopholes
Costly to obtain
Need renewing every 4 years and time limited to 20 years
Examples: Apple vs Samsung, Dyson vs Hoover
Copyrights:
Copyright is a legal right that protects the use of your work once
your idea has been physically expressed
The current copyright legislation in the UK is the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, provides cover for most works 70
years after the death of the creator
Copyright law lays out a framework of rules around how work can
be used
It sets out the rights of the owner, as well as the responsibilities of
other people who want to use the work
It allows management of permission for others to use work
For your work to be protected by copyright law it needs to be original
and tangible:
Original: The work must be a product of your own skill or
intellectual creation, should not replicate someone else's work
Tangible: This means it can't be an idea you had, it needs to be
expressed in a physical form
Design rights provide legal protection for designers to stop
unauthorised copying for ten years
They cover appearance, not how the product works
Design rights exist independently of copyright
Registration is not required, but ownership is hard to prove in a
dispute
Automatic protection for 15 years from the date of creation, even
when a registered design is not applied for
To prove you own design rights it's a good idea to keep original
designs and modifications to prove you were the original
designer of the design
Using copyright, watermarks make it easier to assert ownership
Examples of design rights items: Drawings, CAD designs, 2D designs
There are two types of design protection that exist.
These are: Registered Design Protection and Design Right
Protection.
A registered design right gives you complete control over
the design, whereas an unregistered right only gives you the
ability to prevent others from copying your design.
Trademarks:
Trademarks give legal protection for brand identity and facilitate
marketing
A recognisable combination of words, sounds, colours and logos
is important for companies
A logo is a graphical symbol; it needs to be instantly identifiable
and unique in order to stand out
A trademark may incorporate graphics, but can be a word or
phrase such as 'dual cyclone'
Trademarks are registered by making an application and paying a
fee to the IPO
Trademarks need to be renewed every ten years
The ® symbol is used to warn others that it is protected by
trademark
