Intellectual Property

Intellectual property are the legal rights (control and ownership) of creations, such as ideas; inventions; designs, etc. for the use in commerce (Bainbridge, 2012). Intellectual law in countries seeks to deter individuals or organizations from copying or capitalizing upon another’s work. The main areas protected by protect intellectual property law include: patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret. Intellectual Property can be categorized under the following:

Monopoly Right to prevent copying

De Facto Monopoly

Contractual

Patents Unregistered Trade Marks Trade Secrets

Confidential Information

Registered Trade Marks Unregistered Designs

Know-How

Registered Design Copyright

This essay focuses on Patents, Registered Designs, Unregistered Design Right and trademarks.

A patent is needed to increase innovation and competition. It is an issued document which is applied for and is granted by a governing body that states that an invention which is patented is legally bound to its owner for exploitation i.e. manufacturing, use, sales and imports. A patent is generally issues for 20 years and their costs generally depend on the stage of the application process. In the UK, the total cost of a patent could be estimated at £5000 over 5 years. International patents (PCT) on the other hand could total £7000 over 2.5 years. This is because within the UK, the examination of patentability stage is generally cheaper (£1500) compared to the International equivalent (£300) but most importantly the closing process in the International patent application could be in a range of £0 – £30,000, whilst the UK patent end stage is approximately £100 (HGF, 2014). Patents could give the product or idea not only a competitive a...

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...ion of Time Warner Price paid: $147 billion, of which $128 billion was for IP (87%)

Examples of the value of patents include:

• Nortel, a former Canadian telecommunications company, had a patent portfolio of over 6000 patents. Notable companies like Google bidding; later sold to other notable companies including Apple, Microsoft, RIM, EMC, Ericsson and Sony for $4.5Bn.

REFERENCES

Bainbridge, D. (2012). Intellectual Property. Pearson; 9 edition.

Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, Intellectual Property Office, (No date). Designs: How to Protect your Design. London: HMSO

Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, Intellectual Property Office, (No date). Trade Marks: Quick Facts. London: HMSO

Harrison Goddard Foote LLP, (2014). Intellectual property workshop

World Intellectual Property Organization, Intellectual Property Handbook, (2008).