Name: Boon TehStudent #: 100866301Section: C

Lecture #: 9Lecture title: Intellectual Property

There are 4 main types of intellectual property and they are as follows: Patents Copyright and,

Industrial Designs Trade-marks

A patent grants its owner exclusive right to use the patent and/or sell the product associated with the patent itself. A patent is usually an invention which is new and useful and/or it can be an improvement of an existing invention. The legal applicable term for a patent owner to exercise his right is 20 years starting from the date of application and the application for the patent itself is non-renewable. Patents are essentially a compromise between the government and the owner in which an exchange of monopoly is traded for technical teaching i.e the knowledge of the patent itself. However, a patent must meet the requirement of being new and useful in which the former entails novelty and innovation whereas the latter entails utility or function of the invention. Ownership of a patent is highly circumstantial as the inventor may or may not be the owner of a patent. As an example, a company may retain ownership to a patent although the inventor is its employee due to the employees employment contract and scope of employment. An issues with patents is the Non-Disclosure of Inventions where inventors are highly advised to keep their inventions secret at least until a patent application has been filed. Non-Disclosure Agreements should be used whenever an inventor needs to disclose information with regards to his invention. Also, patent applicants are advised to properly document his inventions in order to ensure a successful patent application. However, a patent application can only be filed when the invention is complete and that the patent ownership system in North America is based on the first to file basis. Trade secrets are anything which confidential and can include research, inventions which are not patented and the technical know-how. Trade secrets have the advantage of having no applicable time limit although there are dangers of reverse engineering of the product or the leakage of exposure by employees. Industrial designs are intellectual property with regards to appearances of a product such as a pattern, shape or ornament and does not include functional features of the product itself. It has a restricted scope of protection and have a legal applicable term limit of only 10 years. Trade-marks are used by companies to distinguish their products or services from their competitors and can be protected by registration or at common law. Trade-marks have no time limit and their registrations have renewable 15-year terms. The registration of a trade-mark grants exclusive right to its owner to use and protect himself against similar confusing trade-marks. However, products that are purely functional such as bricks cannot be protected as a trade-mark. Copyrights are anything that are created in written or electronic form and are protected world-wide. Copyrights protect against copying by others although it is not an exclusive right and that another may independently create the same work. Legal time limit of copyrights include the lifetime of the author and 50 years after his/her death. Copyrights are relatively easy to file and Canada does not require a specimen of the work although the U.S. requires a specimen which will not be disclosed. A product such as an iPod multimedia player may result from the overlap of technologies or design features which are intellectual properties.