Home / Intellectual Property: what you need to know
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Intellectual Property (IP) is a general term for various legal entitlements in relation to certain names, written media, recorded media and inventions. The holders of the IP are entitled to exercise various rights in relation to the subject matter.
In general, the purpose of IP is to protect the right of the ‘author’ of the material yet at the same time allow a degree of access to the general public.
There are four main types of IP: copyright, designs, patents and trade marks. These are discussed below.
Copyright
Copyright can apply to any medium and is an automatic right. This means the author does not have to apply for copyright for their work to be covered. All they need to do it put the copyright symbol and year on the work.
Copyright lasts for 70 years after the creator’s death.
Copyright is owned by the first creator, unless something is produced in the normal course of employment, in which case it is owned by the employer. Therefore, if an employee writes a company report it is the company which owns the copyright, rather than the author.
If a person infringes on copyright law and copies or broadcasts any copyrighted material this is classed as Primary Infringement and is illegal.
The only circumstances in which copyrighted work can be duplicated are if it is for private study, news reporting or research AND if the material is attributed to the author. Personal video recordings are also allowed provided they are to be later erased.
Copyright does not protect ideas until they are fixed in writing or in another permanent way. As soon as an idea is fixed it becomes automatically copyrighted.
Copyright can also protect logos, even if the logo is not registered as a trade mark.
To find out more about copyright click here (Intellectual Property Office website)
Designs
Design protection covers the appearance of a product – for example its colours, shape, font, textures and material.
If you come up with a new design you may be able to protect it by copyright. There are three types of design copyright:
Registered design:
Registered designs enable the creator to stop anyone copying or using their design in the UK for 25 years.
Design right:
This is a free right that happens automatically when you create an original design. It enables the creator to stop anyone copying the design for 15 years.
Copyright:
If a creator produces something artistic but does not intend to reproduce it en mass they will receive automatic copyright.
To find out more about designs click here (Intellectual Property Office website)
Patents
A patent can be applied to a technological invention which is:
The invention must be industrially applicable or have a technical effect. In other words it must be able to be made into something.
It cannot be:
A typical patent application takes two to three years to process, with a cost of £200.
Anyone granted a patent must renew it every year after the 5th year for up to 20 years protection.
To find out more about patents click here (Intellectual Property Office website)
Trade marks
A trade mark distinguishes goods and services from something else and protects brand identity. The following can all be registered as trade marks:
Trade marks can also be given to other more unusual things such as a particular action or phrase associated with a product or company.
A trade mark cannot include words in common usage, or terminology such as ‘excellent’. There are some exceptions, such as ‘Exceedingly good cakes’, which is a registered trade mark belonging to Mr Kipling. Such exceptions may be allowed if there is evidence that the public accept the slogan as belonging to a particular brand.
To be accepted by the Intellectual Property Office, a trade mark must be:
It must not be:
The symbol for something having a registered trade mark is ®. The symbol ™ is used when a company feels it should be registered but it isn’t. The symbol ™ has no legal significance, it is just a defence mechanism.
Company names and domain names all need to be registered as trade marks separately. Domain names cannot include an already-registered trade mark in the domain name; that is infringement.
The UK Intellectual Property Office does very thorough checks when anything new comes in to be registered to make sure there is no possible conflict with anything existing. They recommend that companies always carry out an infringement search before starting a project, to check whether anyone else has that registration, even if a company is not planning to register the item themselves.
It is possible to get overseas trade mark cover after six months of UK registration, due to the Paris Convention, and the rights can then be backdated. For European registered trade mark cover, the Office for Harmonisation in International Markets (OHIM) can grant a registered trade mark for the whole of the EU. The cost of filing for a registered trade mark in the UK is £200 and in the whole of Europe it is €750 plus €850 registration fee.
To find out more about trade marks click here (Intellectual Property Office website)
For more information on any aspect of Intellectual Property, visit the Intellectual Property Office website.
Produced with assistance from notes taken at Intellectual Property Awareness Seminar on 22 May 2007 hosted by the UK Intellectual Property Office