IxD302 – Week 11 Lecture Content

Intellectual Property

 

 

 

Copyright –

Copyright refers to the legal right of the owner of intellectual property. In simpler terms, copyright is the right to copy. This means that the original creators of products and anyone they give authorisation to are the only ones with the exclusive right to reproduce the work.

Depending on the genre eg. Literary (70 years) copyright lasts a different length of time. This could either be XX amount of years after the death of the author/creator or else XX years from the date of the publication.

Creative Commons – A Creative Commons license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted “work”. A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created.

Why might you do this?

Your work will be recognised more easily, by promoting your work, people will be able to find you or your work more easily, opening more doors for you.

Example…

Unsplash – Photographers share their photography which can be used on any platform. This allows photographers to be discovered.

When is it fair/ basically necessary to use Copyright…

• Scholarly works
• News reporting
• Criticism
• Teaching
• Parody (Must be transformative)

It is obviously fine to take inspiration from things that are copyrighted, however it has to be beyond recognition.

How do you prove you own the copyright?

The key thing is to prove you have substantially worked on the project (and that you have the earliest claim to the work)

So… Computer files are automatically date stamped. Keep lots of iterations proving quantity of work and the dates.

Patent –

A patent is the granting of a property right by a sovereign authority to an inventor. This grant provides the inventor exclusive rights to the patented process, design, or invention for a designated period in exchange for a comprehensive disclosure of the invention. They are a form of incorporeal right.

It’s a very lengthy process that grants the patent holder the right to exclude others from using the invention. For an inventor, a patent is a ticket to use the invention exclusively and earn through licensing the patent.

Example of Patents….

Can get very legal and is something that takes years and a lot of money.

Trademark –

A trademark is a unique symbol or word(s) used to represent a business or its products. Once registered, that same symbol or series of words cannot be used by any other organisation, forever, as long as it remains in use and proper paperwork and fees are paid.

You can see TM on Nintendo Switch Logo…

How to apply for a trademark…

Registered Trademark –

You can see the R on the coca-cola logo.

The registered trademark symbol, ®, is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. It takes about 3-4 months to apply – if your mark goes unchallenged. Trade marks are listed by classes. Each class contains a list of pre-approved terms that cover all of the goods or services included in that class.

• Goods are listed in classes 1 to 34
• Services are listed in classes 35 to 45