What Are the Different Types of Intellectual Property?

Intellectual Property (IP) is an item of property that relates to the things you create in your business, often known as intangible assets. Protecting your IP is crucial to prevent competitors from profiting from your ideas.

There are four main types of intellectual property which protect different aspects of your business:

• Trade Marks: Protect your brand names, logos and brand identity
• Copyright: Protects creative and artistic work
• Design Rights: Protect the visual appearance of products
• Patents: Protect inventions and how devices function

Understanding how these rights differ will help you to decide what protection you and your business requires, how to defend against claims, and when to seek advice from specialist IP lawyers.

Trade Marks

Trade marks are probably the most well known, and widely applicable, of the IP rights. They can protect many different things (including colours and smells) but generally they are used to provide protection for your company name, brand names or logos.

• The purpose of a registered trade mark is to act as a badge or origin so that customers can identify the trade mark as relating to your business or your product or service offering.
• Trade marks must be registered and once this has been done they last for a minimum of ten years and can be renewed indefinitely.
• The key to registering a trade mark is that you register against specific goods or services and the mark must be distinctive, which means that it must not be descriptive of the goods or services it is registered against.
• Once you have a registered trade mark you can use this to stop others from using the same or a similar name for the same or similar goods or services via a trade mark infringement claim.

If you do not have a registered trade mark and you notice somebody copying your name,  brand or logo you have to rely on something known as Passing Off. This relies on proving the goodwill or reputation that exists in an unregistered brand. Passing off is not as strong a right as a registered trade mark and is generally more expensive to prove.

Trade marks can be registered in almost any jurisdiction and are important for any online sales, including on Amazon Brand Registry.

If you believe someone is using your brand without permission, explore our Trade Mark Infringement & Passing Off services.

Copyright

Copyright protects original artistic works. People generally think of things like music and film however this definition is quite wide and includes many things relevant to business. By way of example, copyright can can cover:

• Website content
• Photographs and videos
• Marketing materials and graphics
• Customer lists and databases
• Software code

Copyright arises automatically and cannot be registered, so you should keep evidence of creation of any work that may be protected by copyright. Dated drafts or metadata would be examples of this paper trail.

The most important thing when considering copyright is to be very clear over who owns anything that is created. If you commission a third party to do some work for you they will own the copyright in the finished item unless you have a written agreement to the contrary.

For advice on protecting your copyrighted assets, explore our copyright infringement service page.

Design Rights

Designs protect how things look. There is both a registered and two types of unregistered rights in designs and they protect different things. These differences will be explained in more detail in a later post but can be summarised as protecting:

• The shape of a product
• The configuration of a product
• The texture of a product
• The surface decoration of a product

Note that not all types of design right protect all of these elements.

If your business makes anything, then design right is highly likely to be relevant to you, and is something we would recommend exploring.

In particular, we would suggest obtaining registered rights for your designs. These are quite cheap and easy to obtain and provide for stronger and longer protection.

As with trade marks, your design can be registered in many different territories and design registrations are very important if you plan to use online e-commerce sites.Even if you do not but your competitors do, they are usually necessary to secure the removal of infringing products from those sites.

Once you have design protection in place you can stop competitors selling products that do not produce a different overall impression to your product or which look exactly or substantially the same as your product.

Patents

Patents protect how things work. Specifically, they protect anything that is:

• New
• Contains an inventive step
• Capable of industrial application

An invention is considered to be new if it has not been disclosed anywhere in the world at any point in time. The process of registering a patent is beyond the scope of this post. However, you should be aware that you can stop yourself obtaining a patent if you disclose your invention to anybody who does not owe you a duty of confidentiality.

We would therefore strongly recommend that if you have something you think could be patentable that you obtain a non-disclosure agreement and require anybody you are working with to sign this before showing them the product.

FAQs

Do I need to register a trade mark?

Registering a trade mark is optional but recommended. Registering a trade mark provides clear legal ownership and dissuades competitors from imitating your brand.

What if I haven’t registered a trade mark?

Without registering a trade mark, you will have to rely on ‘passing off’, which is more difficult and costly to prove.

Can you register a trade mark on my behalf?

Yes, absolutely. Please visit our trade mark registration page.

How long does a copyright last?

Generally, a copyright lasts for 70 years after the creator’s death, although this differs depending on the work. See our copyright infringement page for more details.

If my business uses an agency or freelancer, do they own the copyright?

Yes. Unless there is a clear agreement in place, the copyright of a finished work will be automatically attributed to the creator. The only exception to this is where the work is created by an employee during the course of their employment, where the work will be owned by the employer.

What’s the difference between registered and unregistered design rights?

Both registered and unregistered design rights consider and safeguard the shape and configuration of your good. They differ in how strong protections are.

Registered design rights are stronger protection for up to 25 years and are easier to enforce.

Unregistered design rights arise automatically but protect your designs for a shorter period and are more difficult to prove in court.

Can trade marks protect colours, shapes, sounds or scents?

Yes. Non-traditional elements of trade marking such as colours, shapes, sounds and scents are rare but occur on occasion. For example, in 1994, Unicorn Products applied to register the ‘bitter beer’ aroma of their dart flights as a trade mark in the UK. This was successful.