What is Intellectual Property ?
Intellectual Property (IP) refers to intangible creations of the mind, such as inventions, designs, symbols, names, etc.
To qualify as IP, those creations must generally be substantial, generally not available to the public at the time of creation, and should provide an edge over the competition.
They are part of the intangible assets of a company and are usually generated by its employees or are acquired.
Those assets can account for a large part of the value of a company.
Therefore, generating, protecting, and managing the IP portfolio of a company is crucial.
Traditionally, creators or owners of IP seek to benefit exclusively from the IP they produced/own, since it can lead to the generation of more revenue compared to the competition.
Think about the Coca-Cola recipe, Apple sleek designs, or the invention of the elevator (but think also about Linux and Wikipedia).
Seeking protection for their IP assets is therefore the usual strategy of companies. Protecting against thieves, against copy, against misappropriation…
To protect creations of the mind, one must first document the creations, i.e. translate said creations into a representation that can be saved and shared. This first provides a protection against oversight and mitigates the consequences of employees leaving the company.
Then, and only then, tools for protecting those creations can be selected, most of them being more or less defined, organized, and enforced by the national legal systems. We then talk of Intellectual Property Rights.
The most famous IPR are:
Confidentiality is always the first level of protection however, even when the creation is later patented. Well managed, it can also be one of the most efficient.
As the maturity of a project grows, the IP portfolio grows :
Corollary: it is normal that young companies do not have a lot of IP.
Patent basics, what it is, what is not.
A patent is an IPR granted by a country to an inventor/owner of an invention, for a fixed period of time.
- It is a national right, there is no such thing as “world patents” or “international patents”.
- If you want to benefit from this right in country X, you need to have a patent in country X
A patent gives you the right to exclude anyone from practising your invention (manufacturing, selling, using...) in a given country, for a given period.
- A patent does not give you the right to practise your own invention!
- A patent does not force you to practise your invention!
- Patents owned by your competitors can block you, you need to look at them and to analyze them in order to evaluate your Freedom To Operate (FTO).
- By granting patents, countries consequently grant time-limited monopolies on particular inventions. This policy is purposely carried out to foster innovation: “if you bring innovation to society, society will reward you”
The various patents filed in different countries originating from the same invention define one patent family.
- You may have many patents, but only a few patent families
- The number of patent families you have, and not the number of patents, reflects the number of inventions you made.
The first step of requesting a patent is to file a patent application before the patent Office of the country of interest (DPMA, USPTO, JPO, INPI…). The date on which the patent application is filed is called “filing date”.
A patent can last maximum 20 years from the earliest filing date, i.e. the filing date in the country you filed first. All patents from the same family will have the same expiration date.
Patents are more than “rights to exclude”, they can also reflect how innovative a company is; they could be sold, acquired, licensed ; they can scare competitors ; they can attract and motivate employees; they can help build brand power; they can be used to mislead competitors…
How to get a patent? What are the requirements?
There are many, but here are the 3 fundamental requirements :
- Your invention must be "susceptible of industrial application"
- Your invention must be "new"
- Your invention must involve an "inventive step", i.e. your invention must be “non-obvious”
Patent Offices are responsible for examining your patent applications and decide whether or not they meet the patentability criteria.
This process is called “examination procedure” and can most of the time be described as follows:
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