Expert Advice

Exploit your ideas and make your business grow

Miles Rees, business outreach manager at the intellectual property office takes us through an introduction to intellectual property

The recession has been a challenging time for businesses of all sizes. However it has also provided the opportunity for new start-ups to compete against more established players and build a niche for themselves in the marketplace.

There are many things to consider when starting a business, and investing in intellectual property (IP) may not be the first thing that springs to mind. However, protecting all the things that make your business unique, from brand names and logos to technology, should be an integral part of any business strategy.

Widely speaking, intellectual property allows people and businesses to own and protect their ideas, whatever form they come in, and as a result, is a vital investment for businesses wanting to maintain market share and grow their offering.

Intellectual property breaks down into four types:

Patents protect the features and processes that make things work. This lets inventors profit from their inventions.
A patent gives you the right to stop others from copying, manufacturing, selling, and importing your invention without your permission.

The existence of your patent may be enough on its own to stop others from trying to exploit your invention. If it does not, it gives you the right to take legal action to stop them exploiting your invention and to claim damages.

The patent also allows you to:
• sell the invention and all the intellectual property rights
• license the invention to someone else but retain all the intellectual property rights
• discuss the invention with others in order to set up a business based around the invention.

Trade marks are symbols that distinguish your goods and services from those of your competitors. It can be for example words, brand names, logos or a combination of
them all.

You can use your trade mark as a marketing tool so that customers can recognise your products or services.

A trade mark must be distinctive for the goods and services you provide. In other words it can be recognised as a sign that differentiates your goods or service from someone else’s. A registered trade mark must be renewed every 10 years to keep it in force.

Design is all about the way an object looks: its shape, its visual appeal...it’s all in the design.

A registered design is a legal right which protects the overall visual appearance of a product in the geographical area you register it. The visual features that form the design include such things as the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture, materials and the ornamentation of the product which give it a unique appearance.

Copyright protects many types of work, from music and lyrics to photographs and knitting patterns. Copyright can protect:

• literary works
• dramatic works, including dance or mime
• musical works
• artistic works, including paintings,
• engravings, photographs, sculptures,
• collages, architecture, technical drawings, diagrams, maps and logos
• layouts or typographical arrangements used to publish a work, for a book for instance
• recordings of a work, including sound
and film
• broadcasts of a work

The majority of people, including business owners, often think of IP as relating only to inventions and patents, and as a consequence, are unaware of the profit and protection that can come from registering trade marks, designs and respecting copyright. Recent research from The Intellectual Property Office revealed that 41 per cent of respondents were unsure about how IP was relevant to their business, or what products they could protect.

There is also a widespread myth that the process can be hugely time consuming and costly. Only in some instances, due to the complex nature of some applications, is the process longer and requiring a larger investment. Often this is not the case.
The reality for many SMEs is hugely different; registering your IP is vital, and will protect you from anybody else claiming credit, or more importantly, profiting from your ideas and products. Many types of intellectual property measures are very cost effective (e.g. £170 online trade mark registration), and there are options for accelerating applications and achieving pending status even if the registration is not yet complete.

Understanding how your business can benefit from IP should be seen as a crucial part of your business strategy, so it is wise to enlist the help of the Intellectual Property Office at every stage of the process, right from day one. We can not only guide you through the process, but also make you aware of other experts and legal professionals who can ensure that every base is covered.

The most important message about IP is that it is an investment. With planning, some research and support from the Intellectual Property Office, it could be one of the best investments of time and money that a business will make. Especially in today’s difficult economic climate, understanding and exploiting IP should be a major priority in business, as it allows firms and individuals to look after what is unique to their company; if they don’t, their competitors will, and will leave them behind in the process.

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