Intellectual property rights

Intellectual property rights are the rights given to persons over the creations
of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use
of his/her creation for a certain period of time.
Types of Intellectual Property Rights:

The four types of intellectual property include:

1. Trade Secrets
2. Trademarks
3. Copyrights, and
4. Patents.

Trade Secrets
Trade secrets are the secrets of a business. All inventions generally start as a
trade secret of the inventor. Inventors have an instinctual desire to keep their
ideas secret.A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design or compilation
of information used by a business to obtain an advantage over competitors.
Trade secrets are by definition not disclosed to the world at large.

Although intellectual property rights protection may seem to provide a

minimum amount of protection, when they are utilized wisely, they can
maximize the benefit and value of a creation and enable world-changing
technology to be developed, protected, and monetized.
Trademarks

Trademarks are another familiar type of intellectual

property rights protection. A trademark is a distinctive sign which is used to
distinguish the products or services of one business from others. Trademarks are
often closely linked to brands. Trademark allows consumers to easily identify
the particular goods or services that a company provides. Some
examples include McDonald’s golden arch, the Facebook logo, and so on. A
trademark can come in the form of text, a phrase, symbol, sound, smell,
and/or color scheme. Unlike patents, a trademark can protect a set or class of
products or services, instead of just one product or process.
Copyrights

Most products have one or more aspects that can be protected with copyright
law. For example, the images and words on the product packaging, the label, the
product itself, and the webpage can be protected with copyright. These literary
and artistic works are protectable under copyright law.Copyrights do not protect
ideas, but rather the manner in which ideas are expressed (“original works of
authorship”) - written works, art, music, architectural drawings, or even
programming code for software (most evident nowadays in video game
entertainment). With certain exceptions, copyrights allow the owner of the
protected materials to control reproduction, performance, new versioning or
adaptations, public performance and distribution of the works.

Under copyright laws, copyrights protect original works of authorship that fixed
in a “tangible medium of expression.” This definition means that the authored
or creative work has been written down on a piece of paper, saved on an
electronic storage device (e.g., hard drive or flash drive), or preserved in some
other tangible format. Examples of copyrightable works include movies, videos,
photos, books, diaries, articles, and software. Copyright does not protect ideas
or useful items, which is the function of patents. Although a software program
is a functional item, it can be protected by copyrights due to the creativity used
in the selection, ordering, and arrangement of the various pieces of code in the
software.Copyright does not need to be registered, but registration does have
significant advantages. You can file your copyright application
at www.copyright.gov.

Patents

A patent protects an invention. It gives the holder an exclusive right to prevent

others from selling, making and using the patented invention for a certain period
(typically 20 years from filing date).

A patent is used to prevent an invention from being created, sold, or used by

another party without permission. Patents are the most common type of
intellectual property rights that come to people’s minds when they think of
intellectual property rights protection. A Patent Owner has every right to
commercialize his/her/its patent, including buying and selling the patent
or granting a license to the invention to any third party under mutually agreed
terms.
There are three different categories that patents can fall under:
  Utility: A utility patent protects the creation of a new or improved
product, process, and composition of matter, or machine that is useful.
 Design: A design patent protects the ornamental design on a useful
item.
 Plant: A plant patent protects new kinds of plants produced by cuttings
or other nonsexual means.

An invention according to Indian Patent Act [Section 2(1) (j)] means:

 a new product or process;
 involving an inventive step; and
 capable of industrial application.

Procedure

For most companies, patents result from the following stages:

Conceptualization
Typically, innovation teams work to address a common problem facing their
organization, industry, or the world at large when developing their idea. When
they’ve arrived at a solution or concept, they’ll draw up plans and gather the
resources necessary to make it a reality. Prototypes or drawings can be created
to provide a more accurate description of the end product or process.

Invention Disclosure
An internal review process often occurs with every invention. The innovation
team consists of internal counsel and an invention review panel of varying
disciplines. The reviewers assess, rate, rank, score, and highlight potential flaws
in the supporting documents and descriptions for the invention, which are then
addressed by the inventor. These reviews can and often do take place multiple
times for a single invention.

Patent Application
If the invention is deemed meritorious enough for the pursuit of patent
protection, some organizations prepare their own provisional or no provisional
patent applications. Others will farm this stage out. There may be more tweaks
as an application is prepared, and then submission to the appropriate patent
office and the prosecution stage begins (the back & forth with the government
patent office). Typically it is outside counsel that manages this process and
related docketing activities.
Docketing is the overarching name for activities that include management of
paperwork and meeting filing deadlines specified by the government patent
office. Because the application process is often very complicated, patent offices
highly recommend working with experienced patent attorneys to handle this
process.

Maintenance
Once a patent is approved, it has a finite lifetime. Patent holders are responsible
for maintaining and tracking the usage of their patents and paying the
appropriate periodic government renewal fees. If a given technology or other
patented asset is collecting dust, you might not want to renew it. Instead, you
can try and sell, license or donate it. Conversely, if a patented asset is
performing well through product sales or licensing activities and its life is
getting shorter, you might think about innovating ahead and maintaining
competitive momentum.

Costs
Costs will vary depending on the country or countries where you file an
application, and can run into tens of thousands of dollars depending on the
invention’s complexity, plus attorney fees. Maintenance fees over the lifetime
of the patent can run into thousands more per patent, per country where patent
rights have been granted. You have to keep your eyes on these costs.

Design

According to Design Act 2000, ‘design’ means only the features of shape,
configuration, pattern, ornament or composition of lines or colours applied to
any article whether in two-dimensional, three-dimensional or in both forms by
any industrial process or means, whether manual, mechanical or chemical,
separate or combined, which in the finished article appeal to the eye and are
judged solely by the eye.

A design, in order to secure legal protection, must consist of a shape which is

three-dimensional or of a pattern which is two-dimensional and the shape or
pattern must be applied to an article or articles. The basic requirement for the
protection of design is that it should be novel and have some individual
character and originality. It is immaterial whether it is registered because design
is an additional category of patent. The design patent protects only the
appearance of an article, but not its structural or functional features. An example
of design is the shape and design of sunglasses, pencils (cross-section:
triangular, circular, hexagonal, etc.), water bottles, soft drink or hard drink
bottles (Coke, Pepsi, Kingfisher, etc.), vacuum fl asks, shapes of mugs and cups,
pin holders, etc.

Designs are considered to be independent. The designs of two apparently

unrelated articles like a pair of shoes and a door handle are claimed in separate
applications. For related articles, the design can be considered as distinct if they
possess different shapes and appearances.

To qualify for the design, the subject must conform to the following features:
❏ it must have ornamental or aesthetic aspects of a useful article,

❏ it must have a definite shape, pattern or colour combination and

❏ it should be reproducible by industrial means (otherwise creation work of art

like painting is copyrightable).
 Treaties and reciprocal agreements with international body

India is signatory to the following international IP agreements:

 Paris Convention – under this, any person from a signatory state can apply for
a patent or trade mark in any other signatory state, and will be given the same
enforcement rights and status as a national of that country would be;
 Berne Convention – under this, each member state recognises the copyright
of authors from other member states in the same way as the copyright of its
own nationals;
 Madrid Protocol – under this, a person can file a single trade mark
application at their national office that will provide protection in multiple
countries;
 Patent Cooperation Treaty – this is a central system for obtaining a ‘bundle’
of national patent applications in different jurisdictions through a single
application.
 UPOV Convention: The International Union for the Protection of New
Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is an intergovernmental organization based in
Geneva, Switzerland. UPOV was established in 1961 by the International
Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the "UPOV
Convention").
The mission of UPOV is to provide and promote an effective system of plant
variety protection, with the aim of encouraging the development of new
varieties of plants, for the benefit of society. The UPOV Convention provides
the basis for members to encourage plant breeding by granting breeders of
new plant varieties an intellectual property right: the breeder’s right.

 Hague Agreement: India is not a signatory to the Hague Agreement, which

allows the protection of designs in multiple countries through a single filing.
 Lisbon Agreement: The Lisbon Agreement, and its latest revision, the
Geneva Act of 2015, provide for the international protection of appellations of
origin and geographical indications through a single procedure with WIPO.

The Lisbon Agreement was concluded in response to the need for an

international system that would facilitate the protection of a special category
of such geographical indications, i.e. “appellations of origin”, in countries
other than the country of origin, by means of their registration at the
International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
References:

https://ocpatentlawyer.com/four-types-intellectual-property-protect-idea/

https://www.innovation-asset.com/blog/the-4-main-types-of-intellectual-
property-and-related-costs

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/upload
s/attachment_data/file/627956/IP-Rights-in-India.pdf