What’s a secret for you?
Is it a promise?
Is it revolution?
Is it art?
Is it fantasy or growth of some kind ?
Is it recipe?
Yes, a secret is all of it (Including Rhonda Byrne documentary). I came across an interesting litigation lately, always nice the learning, the educating self, the mental nourishment. Oh! , the bliss. As we know there are tangible and intangible properties of thyself. Tangible being that can be protected by barricades of legal contracts or watchmen! Intangible ones, being our brainchildren. How to protect that from encroachment or lighting on fire? This blog is not meant for lawyers (Aww I am sorry).
There is something called “Intellectual Property Rights” which keeps our brainchildren from abduction. You suddenly feel smarter, don’t you? Hang on! There’s brief I’ll provide you with. So, IPR has a trajectory based on every kind of brainchild you want to have protected. Few examples being; Trade secret/ Trademark/ Logo/ Patent/ Copyrights/ Industrial Design etc. All of the above are protected under Intellectual property rights. All of them have distinctive sets of rules and regulations to get registered under the rights.
Intellectual Property in
Today’s Economy-
•IBM earns over US$ 1 billion a year from patent licensing revenues
•Over 80% of the market value of Microsoft derives from its intangible assets, especially its intellectual property (trademarks, patents, trade secret over source code, copyright over software)
•The value of the Coca-Cola trademark exceeds US$ 50 billion.
A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides a new and non-obvious way of doing something, or offers a new and non-obvious technical solution to a problem.
A trademark is a sign or any combination of signs, capable of distinguishing a product or service from other products or services on the market.
An industrial design (or simply a design) is the appearance of the whole or part of a product resulting from features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation.
Trade secrets or confidential business information are any information that can be used in the operation of a business and that is sufficiently valuable and secret to afford economic advantage over others.
A geographical indication is a sign used on goods that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or reputation that are due to their place of origin.
Copyright describes a bundle of rights given to creators in relation to their literary and artistic works. It protects items such as paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, architecture, instruction manuals, software, databases, technical documentation, advertisements, maps, literary works, music, films or songs.
A single product may be protected by a variety of different IP rights e.g. CD Player.
►The innovative technical features of the product are protected by a series of PATENTS.
►The embedded computer program controlling the operations are protected by COPYRIGHTS.
►The aesthetic design of CD Player can be protected by INDUSTRIAL DESIGN.
►The Brand used to market it can be protected as a TRADEMARK.
►In addition, the manufacturers probably hold a numbers of TRADE SECRETS ranging from their customer list to some of manufacturing processes or to other confidential information that they would not want to disclose to the competitors.
►In addition, the inventors of CD chose to grant the authorization (or LICENCE) to a number of companies to use the CD technology in exchange of Payment, thus acquiring additional income from the LICENCE.
►The inventors of innovative products can obtain exclusivity to use, or prohibit others from using, each one of this elements through IP Protection.
That is the subtle understanding of how it goes, there’s licenses and buying and selling of licenses that can be done under IPR. There’s penalty and restrictions for the extent of breaking these particular rules of protection for respective rights.
There we learned something new. Happy Quarantining.