Ten golden rules to help you protect your intellectual property
Make a paper trail of your designs and drawings so that you can prove the dates that you came up with your idea, which will help you enforce your rights against other people attempting to copy or exploit your design. Some designers date and send drawings or designs by registered post so that they are date stamped, or lodge copies with a bank.
Negotiation between parties about who should own intellectual property on which they collaborate often concludes that joint ownership is the answer. It can be, but ownership must be regulated contractually, with consents provided by and to each party. Without that each joint owner may find itself unable to exploit or dispose of intellectual property and, in the case of copyright works, copy them.
Put copyright notices on drawings of your designs and other documents. The © symbol should be used, followed by your name and the year of first publication. This can assist in claiming copyright protection overseas under international treaties, and establishes a legal presumption in proceedings that the named party is the proprietor.
For business and product names and logos which are not registered you should put the letters TM after the logo to alert others of (what you consider to be) your trade mark rights. Remember that you can only use the ® symbol after a trade mark if you have actually registered it as a trade mark. Otherwise it is an offence.
If you disclose something which you think may prove eligible for registration (as a patent or registered design) use a confidentiality agreement. Without that, inventions or designs may be deemed to have been placed in the public domain and so become ineligible. Also, clearly mark as 'confidential' any material which you consider to be so. Even where a confidentiality agreement is not used, this is valuable for establishing that material is provided in confidence and therefore has not been (a) placed in the public domain, or (b) made available for onward distribution.
Before making an application for patent, make (or commission) a search of the relevant patent registries. It will not be worth spending the money if somebody got there first.
Weigh up which territories patent protection should cover. UK patents will not give protection in other territories. A national application can, however, offer 'priority' for up to 12 months from its filing date so that an application can during that time be filed abroad for the same invention and with the same original protection date on the first application. Remember that without a series of national registrations, patent protection in one country will amount in practice to placing that technology in the public domain in any other country. Individuals are free to view the patent registries of other countries and (assuming it is not protected in their territory) use the technology claimed in that foreign patent.
Care must be taken when exploiting artistic works through an industrial process. This relates usually to applying works to other articles, such as table mats, stationery etc. Statute provides that an industrial process occurs if there is manufacturing of 50 or more items. The period of copyright protection for such works is reduced to 25 years from the end of the year the articles are first marketed. There are exclusions for printed matter and sculptures.
Under new law in the EU, you may market-test your design for up to 12 months before registering it, saving you money on wasted applications for designs that do not work or will be unprofitable.
The design process is often focused on deliverables: the production of packaging, a new corporate logo, software solution. Think of the intellectual property in that product as an 'invisible deliverable', which the commissioner may well require in order to exploit and protect what is being commissioned. UK (but not wider EU) intellectual property rights in commissioned 3-D articles will vest in the commissioner. Rights in any other product will not. Consider (as a commissioner) what you need; consider (as a designer) what you must retain, and make contractual provision accordingly.
Many designers (often those whose practice involves software development) are asked by clients to assign intellectual property in what they produce. This is dangerous for designers who use a core property or creative process for multiple projects, as they may be required to assign their 'stock in trade'. This is commonly overcome by retaining the core, often-used rights ('background rights') and assigning the rights created specifically for the project ('foreground rights'). The background rights are then non-exclusively licensed to the commissioner.