UK: Protecting Your Intellectual Property

You’ve finished your new business idea, got the name and a great logo, designed a new way to do something, maybe even the domain name which is just right and now you want to stop others using it. Copyright may help. But there are other methods.

Here are just three possible methods of protection.

A trademark is any sign, which can distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another. A sign includes, for example, words, logos, pictures, or a combination of these. Hoover ™ is an extreme example.

Basically, a trademark is a thing which tells people who you are and/or what you do. It can be registered or unregistered. If not registered all you can do if people copy it or use it in a way you don’t like is pursue them for what is called "passing off". We use the word "only" but being sued for passing off is a very, very unpleasant experience. The offending person’s business gets effectively stopped for a while, an injunction is often granted stopping what they were doing, a costly investigation takes place into what money they made from this, they are ordered to pay damages and legal costs! But, against a full-scale action for breach of a registered trademark--that is nothing! And in some circumstances it ends up being a criminal offence with significant fines as standard)

But: a trademark in the UK normally takes about 6-9 months to come through. You can now register once to cover the countries of the EU (and why wouldn’t you?) - that tends to take about 3 months longer.

A registered design is a monopoly right (i.e. only you can use it) for the appearance of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the:

• lines
• contours
• colours
• shape
• texture
• materials

of the product or "its ornamentation".

The Patent Office (who deal also with trademarks) gives the view that to qualify for registration, your design must:

"1. be new which means that it must not be the same as any design which has already been made available to the public,

2. have individual character, which means that the overall impression it produces on an informed user of the design, must differ from the overall impression produced on such a user by any design, which has already been made available to the public. In assessing individual character, we take into account the degree of freedom of the designer in creating the design."

This is obviously a bit complex! They are fairly new as a formal right and experience is slowly coming forward. We would suggest that you take advice on which form of protection is best for you bearing in mind what countries you want to/are able to cover, how much you can spend (cost/benefit analysis) and how long you can make your new idea wait.

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem.

Perhaps oddly, at first glance, software is notoriously difficult to get a patent for. Indeed the world of patents is so specialist that even we seek the help of a specialist patent agent for even the (apparently) more straightforward cases.

But if you can get a patent its intention is to stop your product (invention) being (commercially) sold, made, used or distributed for initially 20 years.

A good example of a long lasting patent is that held by Edison for electric light.

So if you have new business ideas, designs or creative concepts make sure you consider all the possibilities, do a costs benefit analysis and don’t forget copyright.

Never underestimate how much your "intellectual property" is or could be worth.