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Brass From Gumption II |
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 Business
Development Setting
The Law
Here we try to give you the basics on getting your
IP activity in order and hopefully to explain what
you should do in certain situations.
Although the law is clearly written in black & white, the
interpretation of the law blurs many of the edges to
diminish much of the clarity you might expect. This
is because each
case stands on its own merits and the devil in the
detail can change things enormously. We don't like
to 'cop out', but legal advise should
always be sought to clarify your own thoughts and
any suggestions contained within this web site.
Many other IP-related web sites are written by
clever legal minds but these are not always best served to advise
you on
wider business development matters. Yes, a firm of solicitors
is a businesses itself, but your solicitor is likely
to be an employee and
not be an entrepreneur like you, taking risks with
his own money.
So what's it all about? Your intellectual property
is a series of rights that give you a monopoly to
exploit your innovations and creations. Each right
has a differing strength and time allocation given
to it and this is your period of time to get on with exploiting its potential.
First of all, the most obvious and most important
thing you must do before you claim ownership of any
IP is to ensure that you actually own it! Please
research this after reading the remainder of this
page. It may land YOU in hot water otherwise!
As the name suggests, your intellectual property
(IP) is a property like any other you own.
You can secure it, trade with it and even insure it. It's
commonly known as an intangible asset and can
sometimes be
valued and added to your balance sheet. This is
where a clever accountant will come in though.
If you're setting up a new venture, or looking to
sell in say 3 years time, you will need to configure
and maximise your IP in a clearly identifiable
manner. You need to create your internal
administrative systems, protect your brands and
document what you do and how you do it, ie, wrap up
your IP ready for sale by presenting it in a
physical format that the buyer can appreciate. This
may include such things as a company handbook, IP
certificates, brochures, databases, images and other
associated copyrighted materials.
If you're not planning to do this, do it anyway.
It's powerful stuff.
Non-Disclosure
/ Confidential Agreements
Keeping it secret
It's usually crucial to discuss your ideas and
thoughts with other key people in order to realise
that idea into a new product or service. Please be
careful & very selective with who you deal with and before you do
so, consider
whether a non-disclosure agreement is necessary to
keep it within your meeting and/or group.
NDA templates are available on the internet, but again,
they should really be tailored for the particular situation. If
you're to hand over documents for example, state their content
and when they are to be returned to you or how they are to
be destroyed. Just add clarity to the situation.
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Copyright
If it's yours, tell everyone.
The copyright and ownership of your work comes in to
affect as soon as you write it down, draw it, record
it or capture it in some way.
You
cannot copyright ideas, but you can copyright the
way ideas are expressed.
The default in law is that a new piece of work is
usually owned by its creator, unless otherwise agreed.
There's no need in law to do anything to claim your
copyright (it's an automatic unregistered right), but there are some simple things you
can do to reinforce your copyright ownership and
inform others that it's important to you.
Tell everyone. Use the
© copyright symbol on each
piece of work such as at the bottom of these web
pages - Copyright
© 2005 Gumption.
All rights reserved. It's free!
If applicable, brand it with your company logo and
other
images. The more you reinforce your claim, the less
likely people will be to copy it and it will help
minimise incidents in the future, deliberate and
innocent.
When using external consultants to write articles
for you, carry out research, create a marketing brochure or web site,
etc,
it's always best to discuss the ownership of what's
to be created before you engage them. A very good guide to the content of
a Web Site Agreement can
be found by clicking
here.
Copyright of work created by employees in the normal
course of their duties is usually own by the
employer (company). For clarity purposes though, it's
always best to have a clause in your employment
contracts to cover this.
In most cases, copyright lasts for 70 years after
the life of the creator. As ever, there are always
exceptions.
Trade Marks
What makes you different?
If a strong company or product brand is
important to you, investigate what's already out
there first. You will want to differentiate yourself
from the competition and ideally, communicate a
clear simple message about who you are, your company
values or position within the marketplace.
You can do a very crude search on Google and
Yellow Pages, etc, and you can even carry out a
crude trade mark search on the Patent Office web
site for free by clicking
here.
But for a very small fee (£25), you can also use a
service such as that available at the
Leeds Patent Information Unit.
Please note, we always recommend using a Trade
Mark/Patent Attorney who is skilled at interpreting
the results of search data and should provide you
with clear advise about which classes in which to
register your mark. They will also advise you on the
probability of success and whether you should
register your word/phrase (etc) in plain text or
whether it should be registered with your logo or
other particular mark, font or colour.
However, if you are determined to DIY, another
option is to pay the Patent Office to search it for you
(£70) and then register it in a single class for
just £200. Additional classes cost just £50 each.
Again, please be aware that you are not paying them
to interpret the results. It's merely a search of
similar marks. A Patent attorney
may add several hundred pounds to this for their
consultancy work.
Please be clear, if you want to trade mark overseas
or you decide to use a search service which then
gives you cause for concern within the results, please go to a
Trade Mark/Patent Attorney for full advice.
All in all, you can DIY, but you need to know what
you're doing - don't skimp now, then have to re-brand
later!
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