How Can You Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights
IPR provides the legal protection to intangible things such as copyrights, trademarks etc. According to the law, these intangible things should be provided the same legal protection as tangible things. It is the ownership of one’s ideas. If you are creating a unique product making the human life more easy then your idea, method of making the product and the product should be protected from being copied. That’s where intellectual property rights play a significant role.
Types of Intellectual Property Rights;
- The Copyrights Act, 1957: Copyright act protects the authors of original ideas. Original artistic, literary, or musical works, such as books, films, pictures, and software, are protected by copyright. The authors are protected by copyright for a minimum period of 50 years after the death of the author.
- The Trade Marks Act, 1999: Trademark is the mark or symbol, which is capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one person from those of others. It includes the shape of goods, their packaging and combination of colours etc. It protects the symbols, shapes and colours which represent the goods or services.
- The Patents Act, 1970: The patent protects the new invention. It protects the right of inventors for 20 years from the date of filing of the application. It prevents other people from using unauthorized inventions. The invention should be novel and original.
- The Design Act, 2000: It includes the shape, configuration, pattern, ornaments or composition of lines or colours, which is applied to an article by any industrial process.
- The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999: It is a tag, which can be put by qualifying businesses on the products to market their origin. For eg: Darjeeling tea has been given a GI tag.
- The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights Act, 2001: This Act recognizes the rights of farmers and provides protection to plant varieties to encourage the growth and development of more plant varieties. The breeder, farmer can apply for registration of new plant varieties. The new plant variety should satisfy the conditions of novelty, distinctiveness, uniformity and stability.
How to protect Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual Property is a priceless asset. You are creating a unique product for your business, which should be protected from being misused or copied. You can protect your Intellectual property rights in several ways:
- Before outsourcing your work from domestic or foreign partners you should check if they employ security for securing your IP. Your IP should be secure even when remote employees are accessing your IP.
- You should be aware about intellectual property rights and the laws governing it. You should even formulate a strong policy for your IP protection.
- You should discuss your case with the expert lawyer. The lawyer will provide you with guidance in handling such situations.
- You should be 100% sure that your idea or product is unique. You should research the trademark and patent searches in order to find out if somebody else is already safeguarding them.
- You can even hire an auditor to distinguish between the registered and non-registered products. You should equally focus on patent, trademark and copyrights.
- You should record everything from conception of ideas, the number of meetings conducted, when they were conducted, names of people who were a part of those events. These can help in protecting your IP from unwanted loss or theft. These all are the evidence that you own the ownership of an idea or product.
You should not delay in protecting your IP as delay can lead to copying or stealing your idea. If you are the creator, you should protect the creation. For any legal help, contact lead India. We provide online free legal advice, along with other legal assistance. On our platform, you can talk to lawyers. You can freely ask any legal question. We provide the solutions to your legal problems.
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