Week 11: Intellectual Property

In this week’s lecture we discussed intellectual property. We were reminded that we should consult a real lawyers if we need proper legal advice.

We were shown the official government website on intellectual property which we can consult later if needed.

Intellectual Property is anything that anyone creates their intellectual property if it is protected by law. A person’s intellectual property could be a picture they’ve drawn, a product name, or a song.

Intellectual property is your own unless you sign it off to a client. The property can continue to be yours if you instead license out the intellectual property to the client. If you are an employee in an agency, all the designs you create automatically become your employer’s intellectual property.

After this we were shown the types of intellectual properties you can have.

Copyright– is used for artistic and literary works. Copyright is an automatic right everyone has after they have produced a work. However the work should be original and demonstrate skill/labour.

Types of Copyright and how long they protect your property

• Literary- lasts 70 years
• Dramatic- lasts 70 years
• Musical- lasts 70 years
• Artistic- lasts 70 years
• Typographical lasts 25 years
• Sound Recording lasts 50 years
• Film lasts 70 years
• Software (1992–)  lasts 70 years
How to prove you own the copyright- save lots of iterations from a substantial project. The dates will prove you had the earliest idea of something.
Patent- is used to protect inventions and new technological solutions.

How to get a patent?

To get a patent is an extensive process that at the end, will grant 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.
TM- is used to protect company’s brand and keep its identity memorable. You do not need to register for a trademark to be protected under your rights.
A Registered Trademark however, will grant you more legal benefits. The registration process for this could be only 3 to 4 months is it goes unchallenged. Before this it is recommended to make sure no ones registered for similar branding.

NDA- is a contract in which the people who signed it cannot disclose any information included in the agreement.

An NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties, typically to protect any type of confidential, proprietary information or trade secrets that aren’t in the public domain.
These can benefit only one party in the agreement or all, if every party discloses sensitive information. If someone doesn’t sign your NDA at the beginning of the meeting, walk away – it is not worth the risk. If you are signing an NDA read the fine print make sure you are not being compromised.
Investment
At the beginning of a startup company, 100% of its ownership belongs to the founders.  However, after investment to expand the company, the shareholders will want a percentage of that ownership. To make sure the company will still be within you control, only ask for external funding when necessary. During an investment process, the investors might end up with a larger ownership than you and co-founders.
To protect yourself be careful to never give over more than 50% and always insert a ‘buy back clause’ allowing you to buy back shares at a fixed rate within a number of years.

Presentation Update
I have finished writing the content for my presentation. The slides now look something like this:
As you can see from the image on the left I have also added some quick user personas. This was to get the point across in an efficient way to the investors that this app’s demographic is all ages. Also each of the jobs listed in the personas requires a lot of dexterity and use of their hands.
Other things I wanted to use in my slides were some sketches of what my app would look like. I drew these out and coloured them, just to give the audience a better idea of what the app would look like;
This is what they look like on the slides. I tried to show the user journey with the home screen, goals screen, progress screens,  exercises and forums.  It think these came out well for the goal of giving the audience a visual of what I’m pitching.
The next sketches I wanted to implement were my own drawings to represent arthritis and tremors.

 

 

 

I decided to go with the last 2 drawings to draw digitally, this is how they turned out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This pretty much completes my presentation. Over the next week I will practice my speech to prepare for the assessment that friday.

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