How do firms safeguard their innovations?
The development of Ireland as a leading smart economy, which has a thriving innovation-focused enterprise sector and high-quality employment, is a major focus of the government as one of the principal ways that Ireland can deliver economic growth, generate jobs and emerge from recession.
A brief history of Ireland?s ?smart? movement shows plenty of examples of entrepreneurship originating from our universities and other higher educational institutions. IT firms such as Iona Technologies, born in Trinity College Dublin, are a wonderful illustration of how ground breaking technology can arise from collaborative work and commercialisation between universities and industry. More recent examples include Beemune and Blue Box Sensors, both the result of the commercialisation of intellectual property and technology created at NUI Maynooth.
Innovation is not restricted to higher educational institutions: a lot of companies in the private sector are also focused on research and development (R&D) with a view to creating innovative products and services that can be sold. Any business linked to innovation will wish to make sure that it is protected from unfair exploitation by others. A company?s intellectual property may consist of both registered and unregistered rights.
Registered rights are legal rights granted on application to an official body, such as the Irish Patents Office. Unregistered rights happen automatically on creation and aren?t susceptible to any registration regime. The leading examples of registered rights are patents and trade marks. The key instances of unregistered rights are copyright and confidential information. Patents protect inventions that, amongst other things, are novel, involve an inventive step and are also susceptible to industrial application. Examples include patents for new drugs or even for a new type of tea bag. In 1952, for example, Lipton patented a novel foursided tea bag. Trade marks are created primarily to protect a company?s brandnames or logos. Examples include Vodafone and the slogan Intel Inside.
To safeguard its innovations, a business should look into contractual protections or ?assignments? with its employees, contractors and third parties who are active in the company?s business and may therefore need access to, or be involved with creating, its intellectual property. On a practical basis, a company can split its confidential information between employees and contractors so that no single worker or contractor has complete knowledge of all of the trade secrets required to create the company?s products.
By setting up a coherent strategy to deal with its intellectual property, a company is best placed to protect its innovative developments.
If you want to learn more about Intellectual Property Law in Ireland then contact McCann FitzGerald. They are Ireland?s leading legal adviser in developing intellectual property strategies.
Source: http://elucidate.org/2011/09/every-bright-idea-deserves-to-be-protected-adequately-in-law/
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