Intellectual property rights are something which you need to know about if you are running a business. You don’t need to be as well versed in this side of the law as an attorney of course but in order to protect yourself and the business you should know your way around this area of law. Many businesses fail to understand these rights and laws and that can often leave them in legal trouble. To avoid this you must know a little about intellectual property rights and so we spoke to industry experts TME Enterprises in order to bring you the information that you need.
What Are They?
The reason for the existence of intellectual property laws is to protect someone who has created something original, from other businesses or individuals looking to profit from their creation. Essentially intellectual property is exactly what it sounds like, property of something that has been created by the mind.
Punishment
If you fall foul of intellectual property laws then you could face serious consequences for your business. In many cases you may simply receive a warning that you are using something which isn’t yours, and then have the chance to stop using it before action is taken. In more severe cases however you may face legal action which can cost time and cause hassle.
Key Laws
Here are the key areas of intellectual property rights which you need to be concerned with.
Copyright
Copyright is in place to protect artistic creations of the mind such as music, written word and in some cases even written computer code. This is usually applied to penmanship and musical creations.
Trademark
Trademark is the creation of a logo or symbol which represents a company and this is in place to ensure that nobody can profit from the color schemes, the designs or the images which another company uses to identify themselves. For example, the roaring lion which MGM uses ahead of any films which they have been involved with cannot be used by another business.
Patent
Patents protect the inventors of products, parts or mechanisms and again this is to ensure that nobody uses their inventions without the say so of the inventor. Inventors must first play for a patent and then if it is granted they will be protected.
Unfair Competition
This act protects businesses from new companies using unfair tactics to gain an advantage. This includes but is not exclusive to things such as false advertising, trademark infringement and the misrepresentation of an image or a person.
Publicity Rights
Publicity rights protects a person from having their image, their character or a likeness of themselves being used by a business for profit. This means that even if you were to take a photo of your store with customers in, you couldn’t then use that image for marketing unless you have the permission of all the customers in the image itself.
