Our next instalment in our blog series on taking your product to market, focuses on protecting your product.
You’ve already invested time, energy and money in bringing your concept to life, so don’t forget to make sure you try and protect yourself from copycats; whilst we understand that your vision is unique to you, someone else may well have a similar concept in mind.
Give yourself the best chance of commercial success and choose the most suitable forms of legal protection for your idea and product. This article will help you to understand the different types of intellectual property (IP) protection, how they differ and how to go about it.
Protecting your work gives you a firm grounding in the event that you find yourself needing to take legal action against anyone imitating your creation. Protecting IP can take time and it is critical to keep your idea confidential until you have filed for suitable protection, else your rights might be invalidated – so if you are planning to take your product to market, it’s worth getting this process started sooner rather than later.
James Cornford, Senior Associate at Forresters, specialists In Intellectual Property (IP), echoes: “Navigating the complex world of IP can be challenging, but it’s critical to seek advice early on – before sharing an idea with third parties – to protect your interests.” If you must share your concept with another party before filing for suitable protection, then it’s essential that you use an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). You can find some examples of NDAs at gov.uk.
It’s likely that you will want to protect multiple aspects of your work. There are a number of different areas you should consider to make sure your offering is fully protected. Your specific requirements will differ depending on what your product actually is.
Some (limited) IP rights arise automatically and do not require registration. These include copyright and unregistered design right.
Copyright automatically applies to writing and literary works, art, photography, films, TV, music, web content and sound recordings, amongst others. Copyright protects you against others copying your work, distributing your work for profit or gratis, and adapting, performing or sharing your work online. If you wish, you may apply the © symbol, your name and date to your works, although this is not essential, as your work is covered automatically either way.
Unregistered design right protects the shape and configuration of products, and can be used to stop others copying your design. Design right also arises automatically, although you’ll need proof of when you created a design if you want to claim design right. It may be wise to register your design (see below), which establishes a firm date and provides longer-lasting protection.
There are three types of IP protection that you may pro-actively apply for: trade marks, registered designs and patents. These generally offer broader, more robust protection than unregistered rights and so are often easier to enforce. Patent protection can also enable companies to apply a lower rate of Corporation Tax to profits earned from their patented inventions under the UK Government Patent Box scheme.
Trade marks protect branding – you can register words, logos, graphics and more to protect your brand.
Registered designs protect the appearance of products, regardless of how they work.
Patents protect how something works, regardless of how it looks.
Understanding which of these you need will depend on the type of product you are taking to market- a product may be linked to several IP rights, e.g. you could potentially:
We hope this feature has given you a good understanding as to how to go about protecting your product. If you would like legal advice on protecting your IP then we recommend finding a legal team who are experts in IP and can deliver clear, sensible and practical advice. Forresters are a great example of such a team – Senior Associate James says: “We love working directly with designers and inventors as they have such passion for what they do – we can really get to the ‘heart’ of an innovation and explore how best to protect it!”
Conficio Product Design is a design consultancy based in Wilton, Wiltshire. Our team of engineers are dedicated to supporting both established corporations and small tech start-ups to develop exciting and bespoke products. Conficio will undertake the detailed components to your design whilst ensuring that your original idea is adhered to, we work with you to realise your goals. We require our clients to be invested in their design to ensure that we can Make Together.
// Meaning: From con- (“with, together”) + faciō (“do, make”).
// Verb: To make together, prepare, construct, produce, do thouroughly, complete, accomplish, finish, execute.
// Pronunciation: Con - fee - see - o
At Conficio our team of multi-disciplined product design professionals are on hand to work closely with you to explore your concept and bring your idea to life.
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