Patents:
- 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
Examples of copyright items: Books, photos, drama, music, film, TV,
software
Design rights:
- 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
*Logos are covered by Trademark
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