Intellectual property (IP) refers
to mental creations such as ideas, literary and artistic works, compositions,
and commercial marks, titles, and pictures.
Patents, copyright, and
trademarks, for example, are legal mechanisms that allow individuals to get
credit or financial advantage from what they invent or make. The IP framework
seeks to promote an atmosphere in which imagination and invention will thrive by
finding the right balance between the needs of innovators and the larger public
interest.
Types
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Trademark
A trademark is a unique mark or sign representing you, your company, your products or the services that you provide and distinctive in nature, which distinguishes it from one firm to another and thus building a reputation. You can describe your
business in a number of ways; it can be in your company name, brand name,
label, product name, logo, tagline, and domain names. It is necessary that all
the intellectual property rights of your company, including trademarks, should
be established and secured as IPR is the oil of the 21st century. |
Copyright
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive rights including both economic and moral rights to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time, which generally lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 60 years. Copyright subsist only in
an original work under section 13 of the Copyright Act, 1957. The creative work
may be in a literary, artistic, dramatic, cinematographic, or musical form.
Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form
of a creative work and it is not mandatory in the Act but it is strongly
recommended.
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Patent Patent
means a new invention in form of device/article or process of production. It
should be invented and a novel one. Such patents are protected under the
Patents Act, 1970. “A Patent is an intellectual
property relating to invention and is the grant of exclusive right, for limited
period, provided by the Government to the patentee, in exchange of full
disclosure of his invention, for excluding others, from making, using, selling,
importing the patented product or process producing that product for those
purposes”.
In simpler terms, a patent is an intellectual property that one claim as their own and can use it for their own purpose. If anyone wishes to use someone’s patent then they need to pay one royalty or one can even sell their patent. |
Design
Ever wondered what fashion designers or product designers do to
safeguard their design? The answer is simple they get their Design protected
under the Design Act 2000. Now, not everything can be registered under the
Design Act, according to Design Act a Design refers to any article in two or
three dimensional forms (or both) which comprises the features of shapes,
patters, ornamentation or composition of colours and lines such as cutlery,
dress, rocking chair, bottle, apple Ipod etc. The important purpose of design
Registration is to see that the creator, originator of a design having
aesthetic which is not dispossessed of his bonafide reward by others applying
it to their goods.
Design registration does not apply any items
that are covered under the Trademark or Copyright Act. For e.g. stamps, labels,
tokens or cards can’t be registered under the Design Act as the ornamentation
is removed and it cease to be referred as article. Articles must have its
existence independent of the Design applied to it.
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