Laura Newbold Breen, ACID’s CEO, shares some key tips on navigating the complexities of intellectual property, and the many very valuable services ACID offers within this arena ...
Intellectual property (IP) is the foundation for all designs, creative works and brands. Like any business asset, IP is fundamental to growth. However, understanding IP can be a bit of a minefield and copyists can often prey on this to push their infringing agenda.
Sadly, IP theft is rife. From high street retailers stealing ideas from lone and micro creative businesses to mass manufacturers churning out cheap copies of original designs; it is so important to look after your IP from the get-go. With generative AI looking to cherry pick from a plethora of existing information to create ideas quickly without, as yet, any recognition of original ownership, we have to be ‘IP Savvy’ more than ever.
The brand confusion caused within markets where a substandard copy is imitating the real thing is potentially hugely damaging to the original, so IP is the important piece in this puzzle to mitigate any brand damage if you’re unfortunate enough to be copied.
Anti Copying In Design (ACID) are here to help you navigate the trials of IP! We are the UK’s leading membership & campaigning organisation for design & IP. ACID is a trade association for designers and manufacturers with a diverse membership, ranging from individuals to multinationals, and spanning many industry sectors. Our organisation is committed to fighting design theft and lobbying Parliament for design law reform.
At ACID, we believe in these top tips for success:
1. Understand IP Basics.
It’s important to understand the basics:
A registered trade mark is a unitary right. It lasts for life if you renew it every 10 years. A trade mark can be your company name, product name, or you can trade mark a new design range …and you can trade mark logos as well. If you register your trade mark you can include the symbol ® If you don’t register your trademark, you can use ™ instead in the UK.
Copyright lasts for life plus 70 years and is an automatic right in the UK (meaning you don’t need to register it). However, it’s good to have an audit trail for proof and date of ownership (more on this later!). Always use © followed by yours or your company name and year to denote copyright ownership.
Patents cover inventions and last for 20 years, requiring regular renewal, but you can only file for a patent if you have kept your idea out of the public domain! i.e., only shared with your patent lawyer/advisor or under a confidentiality agreement.
Trade Secrets are your knowledge, skills, technical information and know-how; guard them with your life and keep them to yourself!
Design rights – there are three types!
Registered, which last for 25 years provided you renew them every 5, and give you the strongest scope of design protection, including colour, material, ornamentation and so on.
Unregistered last between 3-15 years depending on when your design reached market, and cover “shape and configuration” only. In the latter 5 years, these can be requested as licensable, meaning somebody can copy it but must pay you a royalty.
Supplementary, lasting for 0-3 years, was brought in post Brexit to replace the EU unregistered right in the UK, under which the UK can benefit from protection of one or more of the following: lines, colour, shape, ornamentation, contours, texture or materials.
You can find out all about IP rights in more detail on the IPO website.
2. Take advice before you disclose information
It’s important not to give anything away too early on until you’ve had legal advice. It might be that you have come up with a potentially patentable process, or a new, sustainable material.
Equally, trade secrets are your hidden weapon. Keep anything like recipes, manufacturing processes, business agreements and so on to yourself.
ACID members have access to an hour’s free legal advice per issue, and reduced legal fees thereafter, from a choice of 6 legal affiliates.
3. Check for existing work
Ensure you are not copying and potentially infringing somebody else’s design rights or trade marks. To mitigate any risk of you being accused of infringement, search the IPO for existing registered trade marks, designs and patents within the UK.
However, sometimes it can be difficult to decipher how similar something is. Again, ACID’s legal affiliates can help here and that hour’s free advice is an invaluable tool of IP strategy planning.
4. Keep records and be prepared
An audit trail is a key element of your preparation during the various stages of design (concept, design drawings, prototypes and different progress iterations).
Sign and date all your work! Most ACID cases have settled based on strong evidence to support unregistered designs. Make sure that this information is to hand.
Though unregistered rights exist in design and copyright works, should you ever suspect anyone of copying your work, you will need to provide an audit trail to prove date of creation and ownership. ACID members have unlimited use of the ACID IP Databank – a FREE, secure vault for members to upload designs and important documents to obtain a Police Intellectual Property Unit (PIPCU) endorsed certificate with a unique, tamper proof number. This gives 3rd party evidence for that all important audit trail. The ACID IP Databank has a 10MB file limit, so you can even upload videos!
If you don’t want to be copied, say so! There’s no more powerful message on your website/marketing material. Something along the lines of, “All the intellectual property in our designs belongs to (your name). Any infringements will be pursued seriously.”
ACID members are licensed to use the ACID logo on all their marketing collateral, which is a powerful deterrent to would be copyists. It shows you know your IP rights and ACID are on your side.
5. Stay in the know
ACID run a number of free webinars on a variety of IP subjects on a monthly basis. ACID members can access these webinar recordings any time, as well as a plethora of factsheets and information, and that all important free legal advice and deterring ACID logo.
ACID is there every step of the way to ensure you can stay up to speed with IP developments and combat the copyists.
Sign our IP Charter and pledge your support to Respect, Ethics and Compliance in IP.
