by Philip Partington, Partner, Intellectual Property, JMW Solicitors
A business’ intellectual property (IP) assets can include its name, logo, product names and descriptions, inventions, innovations, creative works and more. In some cases, these assets help establish the company’s relationships with its customers, build trust in products or services, and differentiate the business from its competitors. In others, products themselves are intellectual property, and protecting them can be vital to maintaining a competitive edge and preventing other businesses from imitating your success.
As such, IP is extremely valuable to many businesses, and it is important to protect it – although, in some cases, this can be easy to miss.
Protecting intellectual property assets means that you can enjoy their full value, maintain your business’ reputation and relationships with customers, and grow your organisation. To do so, you will often need to register your assets for trade mark or patent protection – this means identifying the assets you own, recognising their value, and understanding how IP laws can be used to keep them secure.
Unfortunately, there are common misconceptions about IP that can make this difficult. Much IP is subject to interpretation, meaning that legal guidance on these matters is key. Otherwise, misunderstandings about what assets you can protect and how to do so leave businesses and their IP vulnerable to infringement.
Here, the intellectual property experts at JMW Solicitors discuss the business assets that qualify for legal protection, explain the processes through which businesses can secure their rights, and outline why monitoring is the best way to proactively prevent infringement and enjoy the full value of IP.
What types of assets qualify for IP protection?
The three primary types of IP protection for businesses are trade marks, copyright and patents. Each is designed to apply to a different type of asset, and ultimately ensure that businesses are motivated to innovate, develop new products and compete.
Even if you are familiar with these terms and understand how they apply generally, your business may own assets that you do not realise can be protected. Alternatively, it can be difficult to identify infringement of your rights by a competitor if you only understand the assets that qualify for protection, but not the rights that each category grants to the owner.
Trade marks
Trade marks can be used to protect words, images and sounds, which means that they are typically used to safeguard a business’ brand assets. To secure a trade mark, you must register your asset, and it is advisable to do so – while it is possible to defend unregistered assets against infringement, it is much more difficult to do so. You can register various assets as trade marks, such as business names, product names, slogans or taglines, logos and related designs, jingles and sound effects, and packaging designs. An asset must be original and unique to qualify for registered trade mark status.
Copyright
Copyright is a form of protection that grants the owner of an original work exclusive rights to control its use, reproduction, distribution, and adaptation. It applies automatically and is granted to the creator of a piece that fits into any of the following categories:
- Literary and dramatic works
- Audio and musical works
- Films and broadcasts
- Sound recordings
- Typographical layouts
If your business employs someone to create a work of this nature, you will be considered the copyright owner of that piece under most circumstances.
Many organisations fail to recognise that they could benefit from copyright, because they assume that this only applies to businesses that create media products in these categories. However, lots of businesses have assets of this nature that qualify for protection – including any content that you write or commission for your website, written descriptions or images of your products, and even databases of customer information.
Patents
Patents apply to inventions, innovations and improvements to existing products, and grant inventors the exclusive right to make, use, sell, or import their invention for a limited period. You must register for a patent to protect your idea and, in most cases, it will last for 20 years from the filing date once it is granted.
A patent cannot apply to a vague idea, and as such, you must explain how your innovation works in your application. This also ensures that similar ideas can be compared to yours for the purposes of determining whether or not they infringe on your rights. If your business is engaged in research and development, or your business model is based on a new product you have created, it is often vital to protect your ideas with patents.
How can a business benefit from its intellectual property?
In simple terms, a business’ IP strategy should be to protect the assets it owns, and to prevent infringement by other parties using the legal powers that IP rights grant to their owners.
Working with an experienced intellectual property solicitor is often the best way to identify all of the valuable assets your business owns and protect them. An advisor can help you to develop an IP strategy, manage your assets and commercialise them – for example, there may be opportunities for you to make money from your IP by selling or licensing it to a third party.
When you have secured the legal rights and protections for your assets, you should actively monitor for infringement to ensure that your rights are upheld. Solicitors can also help with this by providing monitoring services, which review any new trade mark applications and can highlight those that could potentially infringe on the marks you already own.
Many businesses could benefit from being more proactive in understanding the intellectual property rights that apply to them, learning how they could benefit from those rights, and working to secure their assets. The result can be a stronger relationship with customers, bigger growth opportunities, and the opportunity to enjoy the maximum financial value of the brand that you have built.
