Intellectual Property Registration

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.

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.

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 I-pod 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.