YPIE Blog Day One: ACID

Lisa Gould Sandall, a designer at Ercol and a participant in this year’s Young Professional Industry Experience programme, shares what the group learned from Anti Copying I Design on day one.

Intellectual Property (IP) is intangible property, or property that comes from the mind. You can’t protect an idea, but you can protect the documented development of a concept, and features of a design. Understanding intellectual property rights is a way to protect a creative product.

There are some ways to protect intellectual property depending on the medium, including the following;

• Copyright (applies to 2D development only, automatically obtained)
• Design rights (supersedes copyright when concept becomes 3D, can be registered or un-registered)
• Patents (innovations which are new and take an inventive step, 25 years monopoly then public)
• Trademarks (Protection for unique identity for a company – valid for 10 years & renewable)

Ownership of your intellectual property gives you the right to monopolise a concept, including producing and selling the item, selling the intellectual property rights, or licensing a third party to manufacture or sell the item.

Licensing agreement contracts should state:

• Who owns the IP
• Exclusivity of IP
• An exit strategy
• Whether there are rights to subcontract
• Duration of agreement
• Licencing of future designs
• Criteria to sustain quality and protect brand
• Right to terminate.

Good housekeeping can go a long way to protecting intellectual property. Concept generation and development should be clearly signed and dated, and filed away as evidence. Registering designs on the ACID design database is an additional way of proving date and ownership.

In the event of your IP being infringed, don’t react immediately. Gather as much proof and evidence as possible (eg. Ownership of IP, what territory, what date, is registration still valid, images of infringing product) before taking any action, and seek professional advice.