Enterprise week: "Good Ideas Need Protection"

It is a title of today's lecture. Silas Brown, a solicitor, was talking about protecting our intellectual property rights. He began with a dictionary definition: "rights in property that result from original creative thoughts, as patents, copyright material, and trade marks..."



These are all my notes:

Copyright works:
-Original works: literary, dramatic, musical
-Derivative works: sound, recordings, films
-Other: typographical arrangements

Owner rights:
-Exclusive right to "licence" the copyright
-Exclusive property rights to re-use, copy etc.
-Lasts 70 years after death of author

Design rights relates to change from the idea to phisical thing, e.g. a chair. They are divided into registered and unregistered.



Owner rights:
-Exclusive property rights to produce articles,
-Exclusive right to "licence" the unregistered design
-Unregistered: Lasts 10 years from date of marketing
-Registered: Up to max25 years, renewed every 5 years

Unregistered:
-Original functional designs
-Whole articles or parts of articles
-Exemptions: surface decoration, methods/principles of constructions

Registered:
-Designs relating to appearance or ornamentation

Criteria for what can be registered:
-Must be new
-Must have individual character

Register design lasts longer than unregistered!

Patetnts - pure inventions

Criteria:
-Novelty- inventive step
-Capable of industrial application

Rights:
-Exclusive right to make, sell and licence the invention

Trade marks (e.g. Parker Knoll, BANG&OLUFSEN)- anything that can be represented graphically. They're also divided into registered and unregistered.

Registration:
-Classification of goods/services
-Territorial

Licence Agreements - key areas:
-Value of the design
-Quality of reproduction: reputation/goodwill
-Licence fees/Royalty rates

Finally, Silas Brown advised us to identify and protect our IP!