Liverpool Solicitors

Copyrights are rights that come into automatic existence and are designed to protect original artistic works.  They are enforceable over a creator’s lifetime plus an additional 70 years. Artistic work does not merely cover pure art.  Literary work, as well as including pure literature, can cover things such as computer code, marketing plans or databases.  Other works including are broadcasts, videos and films and sound recordings.

A copyright enables you to protect your right to profit from your work and control if and how it is reproduced.

What are trademarks?

A trademark is used to identify goods and services and protect their association with a particular company.  A trademark might protect a brand name, a logo or particular word or colour associated with your company.  Even a particular smell can be trademark.

It is important to protect trademarks because they help make your brand visible and distinct and in turn build up brand image and loyalty.  As the owner of a trademark, you are in a position to sell, mortgage or license it.

Register my trademarks.  How can I do this?

First of all, it needs to be established that the idea is unique enough to be claimed your own.  Remember the recent dispute over the use of apple trademarks between apple computers and apple records?  This dispute may give you an idea of what is expected.  Of course, an intellectual property solicitor can advise you on this as well.

If you have a unique trademark, then it needs to be registered with the UK Intellectual Property Office who will conduct investigations with regards to the uniqueness of the idea, whether there are any competing claims etc.  Again, an intellectual property solicitor will provide invaluable assistance in making your claim and find ways to get around any potential brick walls you hit.

What is a patent?

Patents cover unique inventions.  Inventions include new physical things, solutions to technical problems and unique ways of doing things i.e. manufacturing processes.   Having a patent allows you to determine exactly what happens to your work, that is who entitled to use it, profit from it and, if you decide to sell it, who owns it.  They last for 20 years.

You can apply for a patent if your invention is genuinely new and has not been released anywhere in the world; if it has a practical application to any industry and, finally, if it displays a technical characteristic that is verified as genuinely unique by a technical expert in the field applicable to the invention.

Patents do not apply to any work that can be properly protected under other types of intellectual property rights, such as copyrights and trademarks.  Other exemptions include computer software, medical discoveries, discoveries related to the natural world, general methods of doing business, amongst others.

I’m currently working for a company and I have come up with a new idea that they are claiming is theirs.  What can I do?

If you came up with the idea in order to fulfill the duties of your employment rights, there is not much you do other than argue that the idea was created outside of your normal employment duties.  If, for example, you come up with new inventions in your shed, using your own tools, outside of working hours, and do this as a hobby, the rights to those inventions should be yours.  However, if you were instructed to make an invention by your employer, the employer might be able to claim it as his.  Assessing whether you can correctly call an idea your own will depend on the surrounding circumstances of the case, the particulars of your contract, the nature of the company you work for and the nature of the idea.  As such, it is not easy to predict the outcome until a proper and thorough investigation has been made.