Patents

FORMS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are rights governed by statute that provide individuals with a right to prevent others from exploiting or abusing their intellectual creations

PATENTS

A patent is a legal title granted to an applicant for protection of an invention. It is a registerable form of IP. It must be applied for at a patent office by submission of a ‘patent specification’ disclosing how the invention works.

Conventions and treaties

Every country’s legislation includes laws for the protection of IP, in which there is a provision for patent laws to govern the protection of inventions in that country

Refinements of the European Patent System

There have been discussions at the EPO and EU Council for many years now on the introduction of new features to the European patent system, which would improve the overall cost and efficiency of filing and enforcing patents in EU Member States.

CONCLUSION

Patenting is subject to a set of complex rules and conditions and a careless approach to managing the protection of an invention can seriously affect the ability to benefit fully from its commercial potential.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright is a form of IP designed to protect the rights of a creator of literary and artistic works, computer programs and databases. It does not provide protection for the ideas, concepts or inventions in these works per se.

Works Protected by Copyright

Typical works covered by copyright are: original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, published editions of works, sound recordings, films, videos, broadcasts and cable programmes, computer programs and database

Duration of Copyright

International treaties have done much to harmonise copyright law across territories, particularly with respect to the duration of copyright, which in the past varied greatly between countries depending on the particular form of copyright.

TRADE MARKS

Trade marks and service marks provide protection for the goodwill and reputation of a company in its products and services, as opposed to protection of the products

Registration of a trade mark

It may be possible in certain countries for a company to assert ‘unregistered rights’ over a mark if it has been used by the company in the marketplace for some time and has become synonymous

DESIGN RIGHTS

Traditionally, most EU Member States operated a system for protection of industrial designs associated with the ‘artistic’ or ‘aesthetic’ features of a design.

The community design

In October 1998, the EU introduced Directive 98/71/EC, which harmonised the national systems for protection of designs across the member states.

Registered Community Design

Application for a Community Design is filed at the same office as that for registering trade marks – OHIM in Alicante, Spain.

SECRET KNOW-HOW

For some companies, ‘know-how’ and ‘trade secrets’ can be just as valuable a piece of IP as a patented technology.

Know-how may be exploited solely by the company that is using it, or it can also be exploited just like other IPRs, where the owner of the know-how decides to maximise value in the technology by licensing it to third parties for payment.