Intellectual Property, also known as IP, is an intangible asset consisting of knowledge and ideas. Like any form of physical property, IP is owned and it can be bought and sold. It can also be rented out through a process of licensing that can result in significant commercial and financial benefits for individuals, research groups, and the organizations employing them. There are many intellectual property types:
Trademark
Key factors in the start-up and value of a company, trademarks have taken on such importance that they now represent one of a company’s most valued assets for growth.
Once their distinctiveness and novelty have been ascertained, trademarks need to be preventatively protected. Steps include securing registration in the country or area corresponding to where there is an existing and future presence of the company, followed by strict monitoring of the trademark in the market and on local trademark office registers. These measures make it possible to act promptly in the event of similar or easily confused trademarks being applied for by third parties by opposing their registration or taking appropriate actions to stop their use.
For many years elimark has provided strategic guidance in devising and implementing global branding strategies to many of the most important local and international companies in all fields.
Its unique wealth of expertise and ongoing research into the international landscape has enabled elimark to provide clients with sophisticated and practical advice in all areas of trademark practice, developing innovative solutions and formulating programs tailored to securing, protecting enforcing, and exploiting their trademarks on a global scale, while ensuring a superior cost/benefit balance.
International Trademark Registration:
Trademark registration is territorial in nature. Separate applications need to be filed in each country where you wish to register your trademark.
If you plan to sell and market internationally, it is essential to register your trademarks in those countries. Usually, the party who first registers a mark owns it. Therefore, it is significant to register your trademarks in each country your company considers to be a potential and key market. A national trademark registration stops at the border and does not afford rights to the owner of the trademark outside the country in which it is registered.
Most companies expanding into other countries often realize the value of registering their trademarks abroad once it is too late, that is, once they are faced with counterfeiters/imitators or once they are accused of infringing the rights of others. The risks of doing so are very high and the consequences may be extremely costly and detrimental to a company’s entire business and export strategy. It can be a severe financial liability to invest in a brand, promote it in the local market, then find that the brand cannot be registered and used internationally and have to finally abandon that investment.
Registering a trademark abroad renders the company an exclusive right to commercialize its products in those markets.
This not only provides a solid foundation to stop counterfeiters but also ensures that the company enjoys exclusive rights over what may be one of its most valuable business assets.
Registering a trademark abroad also provides the opportunity to license the trademark to others or maybe the basis for a company’s franchising or merchandising strategy.
Thus, the benefits of the international registration and the protection of one’s trademark clearly outweigh the costs of such registration
Patent
A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application. In principle, the patent owner has the exclusive right to prevent or stop others from commercially exploiting the patented invention. In other words, patent protection means that the invention cannot be commercially made, used, distributed, imported or sold by others without the patent owner’s consent. Patents are territorial rights. In general, the exclusive rights are only applicable in the country or region in which a patent has been filed and granted, in accordance with the law of that country or region.
Industrial Designs
In a legal sense, an industrial design constitutes the ornamental aspect of an article.
An industrial design may consist of three-dimensional features, such as the shape of an article, or two-dimensional features, such as patterns, lines, or color. In principle, the owner of a registered industrial design or a design patent has the right to prevent third parties from making, selling, or importing articles bearing or embodying a design which is a copy, or substantially a copy, of the protected design, when such acts are undertaken for commercial purposes. Industrial designs are applied to a wide variety of products of industry and handicraft items: from packages and containers to furnishing and household goods, from lighting equipment to jewelry, and from electronic devices to textiles. Industrial designs may also be relevant to graphic symbols, graphical user interfaces (GUI)
and logos. In most countries, an industrial design needs to be registered to be protected under industrial design law as a “registered design”. In some countries, industrial designs are protected under patent law as “design patents ”. Depending on the particular national law and the kind of design, industrial designs may also be protected as works of art under copyright law.
Geographical Indications
A geographical indication (GI) is a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin. To function as a GI, a sign must identify a product as originating in a given place. In addition, the qualities, characteristics, or reputation of the product should be essentially due to the place of origin. Since the qualities depend on the geographical place of production, there is a clear link between the product and its original place of production.
Geographical indications (GIs) identify a geographical area in which one or several enterprises produce the kind of product for which geographical indications are located. GIs differ from trademarks enterprises that offer certain products and services in the market.
A special kind of geographical indication is used on products that have a specific quality that is exclusively or essentially due to the geographical environment in which the products are created. An appellation of origin is more precise since it indicates that the product has certain qualities derived from its geographical origin.
Geographical Indications Protection affords the right to prevent unauthorized persons from using GIs, either for products that do not originate from the geographical place indicated, or not complying with prescribed quality standards. Furthermore, it is important to protect GIs against becoming generic expressions- lose their protection. They are protected under national laws and a wide range of concepts, such as laws against unfair competition, consumer protection laws, laws for the protection of certification marks, or special laws for the protection of geographical indications or appellations of origin. The protection period for geographical indications ranges from 10 to 25 years.
However, a protected geographical indication does not enable the holder to prevent someone from making a product using the same techniques as those set out in the standards for that indication. Protection for a geographical indication is usually obtained by acquiring a right over the sign that constitutes the indication.
Copyright & Related Rights
This legal term describes rights given to creators for their literary and artistic works. Basic copyright rights are granted to creators of music, films, novels, and poems. Related rights are granted to performing artists, producers of sound recordings, and broadcasting organizations for their radio and television programs.
Copyright protects the right to reproduce the work, to make copies, and to perform or display the work publicly. Be aware that copyright protection extends only to the original work preventing its copying. Copyright protects expression only, not the ideas, schemes, systems, artistic style, or “method or principle of manufacture or construction.”
Related Rights
Traditionally copyright protection is extended to writers and artists, and non-traditionally the right has been extended to artists, performers, record producers, and broadcasters who have been accorded rights akin to copyright. These non-traditional rights are often extended to protect the legal interests of certain persons and legal entities who contribute to making works available to the public.
Related rights protect people or organizations that add substantial creative, technical, or organizational skills in the process of bringing a work to the public.
They’re typically granted to three categories of beneficiaries: performers, producers, and broadcasters.
The following are examples of protected works:
– Literary, Dramatic, Musical, and Artistic Works
– Literary Work: Books and Other Writings
– Literary Work: Computer Programs
– Dramatic Work: Plays, Films, Choreography
– Artistic Work
– Musical Work
