Intellectual Property – common mistakes to avoid

This blog post provides a few tips on how to avoid some of the common mistakes made by businesses in relation to Intellectual Property (IP).

IP is an extremely exciting area which has increasing importance within today’s digital age. It is also notoriously complex and highly regulated. It’s all too easy to make mistakes and assumptions around IP which can lead to significant losses and disappointments. If a business does not fully understand the IP assets that it owns, creates and relies upon, both now and in the future, then it cannot release and exploit the true value in those assets.

A note before we get started. Whilst the emphasis here is on English law, please don’t take this article as providing legal advice. Readers should seek specialist legal advice from their lawyers, patent agents or other grown-ups, as needed. However, if it’s pragmatic and tailored commercial advice that you are after – then read this and then come and speak to us at Serenwood.

Common IP mistakes

 1. ‘You have to register your copyright’

You do not have to register your copyright in the UK. Copyright arises automatically as soon as you have physically created something.

Note that copyright does not exist until you have taken that brilliant idea you had in the shower and created something from it – so write it down, design it, code it, record it or capture it in another tangible format.

Whilst this is great for anything you have created, remember it works both ways, so that anyone else’s work is automatically protected by their copyright.

A quick word about the copyright symbol (©). There’s no legal requirement to use the © symbol on your work, but it looks nice and alerts naughty folk that you are asserting your rights over your work. See our copyright notice at the end of this blog for an example.

 2. ‘You own the copyright to anything you have paid for’

It comes as a surprise to many companies to learn that this is not correct.

If the work was created by an employee as part of their everyday duties, then there’s no problem because the company owns the copyright. Things become more complex when work was commissioned to another company, freelance worker, contractor or a friend who lives next door.

Unless you agreed in writing that you will own IP rights to the work created, the default position is that the person who creates the work owns it, regardless of how much you have (or haven’t) paid for it.

If in doubt, come and speak to us. Don’t ignore any issues or nagging doubts, it can prove expensive when your ex-friend and next door neighbour holds you to ransom over the company website. And even more expensive when you realise that the company who designed a small (but critical and unique) part of your amazing time travel machine can stop you from selling it to Dr Who.

3. ‘I have a great idea, I can trade mark it’

It is easy to see how the different areas of intellectual property law are confused. Put simply, copyright is about something you have physically created. Patents are about something clever that you have invented. Trade marks are about protecting a name or brand.

There’s plenty of free and easy to understand advice on the internet. See www.wipo.gov.uk. This provides a good starting point.

However, if you don’t really understand what intellectual property is, then this begs the question whether your colleagues are making the same mistakes. Not only that, but if you don’t understand it, then how can you ensure that you are protecting valuable company assets and avoiding expensive mistakes?

Our advice is to build and cascade knowledge within your business to raise awareness and ultimately change behaviours.

We can help you with this and we usually put together a tailored training session (or suite of sessions) to suit your company and the people who work there. We also produce practical tools such as checklists, help draft and negotiate contracts, and for retained clients – where we already understand their business – we work flexibly in order to be on call for ad hoc queries to quickly solve problems or answer queries.

 4. ‘Intellectual Property is something for our lawyers & agents to sort out. I don’t need to get involved’

Companies are paying large fees to lawyers and agents to maintain its portfolio of intellectual property, without truly understanding the value this brings to the business.

As an example, if you register and maintain a number of global trade marks and patents:

  • Have you considered how you would enforce your rights if any issues arise?
  • Are there cheaper and more streamlined ways to achieve a similar level of protection in other countries?
  • Have you checked whether the company still uses all of the registered brands and names in every country?
  • How does your IP portfolio align with sales and strategic management plans?

If you don’t understand the drivers and strategy around your Intellectual property, it is the equivalent of paying a lease on an empty office.

Our advice is to plug the gap and release the best possible value from your IP and the associated costs.

5. ‘Actually, let’s ignore intellectual property – it doesn’t apply to our company’

IP applies to every organisation. In its simplest form, it includes brand names, published materials (such as company / product literature) and the company website. If you don’t have any of these then, well done, you are indeed very unique.

IP is not just about protecting YOUR rights, but it is also about making sure that you are not falling foul of other people’s rights. Whether intentional or not, you can get into some seriously expensive legal battles by not keeping a check on the market. Ignorance provides no defence when you are infringing someone else’s registered rights. It isn’t just legal fees and management time – damage to reputation can be catastrophic.

Expensive mistakes happen and can be easily avoided – so don’t ignore IP and how it applies to you and your business.

Our specialists at Serenwood would love to talk to you about any of the issues above. They are annoyingly enthusiastic about all things IP and have a wealth of experience in providing clear and pragmatic commercial advice. We offer a tailored Serenwood IP Audit (to give you an up-to-date, fact based report on how your IP is working within your business) and a suite of IP training which can be delivered to your teams to give them the confidence and knowledge to manage and grow the value of the IP.

Get in touch : wendi@serenwood.co.uk

© Serenwood Limited 2015