Intellectual Property laws, along with courts decisions and regulations, establish rules for the following activities-
- Registration and administration of intellectual property
- Selling or licensing of intellectual property
- Resolving disputes between companies making or selling similar intellectual property products or services.
Intellectual property laws don’t prevent someone from stepping on an owner’s rights. But the laws do give the owner ammunition with which to take a trespasser to court. This is the most well-known benefit of owning intellectual property. The owner acquires exclusive rights and can file a lawsuit to stop others who use the property without authorization. If the intellectual property owner does not confront the person or company who has acted without permission, the illegal activity will likely continue.
Intellectual property law consists of several separate and overlapping legal disciplines, each with its own characteristics and terminology. Intellectual property protects:-
Patent law establishes three types of patents
Utility patents are awarded for new processes, machines, manufactures, or compositions of matter. The utility patent owner has the exclusive right to make, use and sell the invitation for a limited term. It expires 20 years after the date the application was filled.
Design patents are awarded to new nonfunctional, ornamental, or aesthetic design elements of an invention or product. A design patent lasts 15 years from issuance if it was filed on or after May 13, 2015. If filed before that date it lasts 14 years from issuance.
Plant patents are granted for new asexually reproducible plants. A plant patent expires 20 years from the date the patent was filed.
- Copyright law protect expressions of creative ideas such as songs, artwork, writing, films, architecture, and video games. It does not protect ideas and facts, only the manner in which those facts and ideas are expressed. Copyright protection lasts a long time often more than 100 years.
- Trademark law protects marketing signifies such as the name of the product or service or the symbols, logos, shapes, designs, sounds, and smells used to identify it. This protection can last as long as the company continuously uses the trademark in commerce- for example, many trademarks such as Coca-Cola and General Mills, have been protected for over a century.
- Trade secret law commonly protects confidential designs, devices, processes, compositions, techniques, information, or recipes. A trade secret is any confidential information that gives a business a competitive advantage. The owner of this confidential information can prevent others from using the information if it was obtained legally under trade law. Trade secret protection lasts for as long as the business maintains the secret.
Forms Of Intellectual Property
Sometimes trade secrets, copyright, and trademark laws intersect with respect to a particular product or service. Some common examples of this are as follows:-
- Trade secret and patent- It is possible to pursue a patent application while simultaneously maintaining the invention as a trade secret at least for the first 18 months of the Indian application process. The Indian patent and trademark office regards applications as confidential until they are published. Unless the applicant files a Nonpublication request at the time of filing and doesn’t file for a patent outside India, the PTO will publish the application within 18 months of the filing date.
- Copyright and trademark- It’s not uncommon for an item to be protected under both trademark and copyright law. For example, the expressive artwork in a package design might be protected by copyright while the overall look and feel of the package might be protected as a form of trademark. Likewise, an advertising commercial might include some material covered by copyright and other material covered by trademark. The difference here is that copyright protects the literal expression whereas trademark protects whatever is used to designate the source of a product or service being offered in the marketplace.
- Patent, copyright, and trademark- Patent law can intersect with copyright and trademark law in the case of certain products. For example, the designer of a toy or jewellery may protect the device’s name or appearance of any artwork or graphics and the novel nonobvious functionality of the device.
Read More: How to Protect a Business Idea?
