Intellectual Property Rights

In today’s competitive business world, everyone is coming up with new designs and features for their products. The innovations improve the market value of one’s business by focusing on customer acquisition. With the growing trends, individuals or institutions can copy the product illegally. Thus, to protect their ideas, people generate intellectual property. Like any other property, it is an intangible asset and gives acknowledgement and monetary advantages to the product owner. Securing your ideas has become essential these days, and there are different types of Intellectual property rights to preserve and promote the worth of such intangible properties. 

What are Intellectual Property Rights?

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the legal rights given to people or businesses over the expression of their thoughts, designs, developments, and symbols. IPR provides an exclusive right over the use of intellectual goods for a specific period of time. The rights are limited to maintain a balance between owners and users. Companies at national and regional levels can claim IP rights. 

Types of Intellectual Property Rights

Businesses usually own four main types of intellectual property rights: patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The rights encourage everyone to research the market viability of the product and incorporate features that are unique. 

1. Patents: A patent is a legal document provided by the government to prohibit the imitation, sale or use of innovative technology. It is the most widely used intellectual property right. Companies unveil specialised techniques and technologies used to create the product to the general population in a patent application. Patents safeguard technologies that are new and useful to the people, and it also protects the invention from unauthorised use by other competitors. The law is valid when the proprietor files the patent application for 20 years. It gives the right to protect the invention during the documentation—for example, the design of Coca Cola bottles.

There are three different types of patent: design, utility, and plant patent.

• The design patent includes the ornamental qualities of the product. 
• The addition of new or further developed items and processes comes under the utility patent. 
• The plant patent safeguards practical use like pharmaceuticals and software methods. 

2. Copyrights: Copyright grants permission to protect the artist and their original work and prevents someone else from using the concept. The copyright holder can sell, distribute, or copy their musical, literary, artistic or dramatic work. The copyright is valid for the owner’s lifetime and 60 years counted from the year following their death.

3. Trademarks: Trademark helps in building a brand. Of the different types of intellectual property rights, trademarks protect an organisation’s logos, sounds, words, colours, or images. Users recognise the product through their logo and symbols. A few examples of trademarks are McDonald’s yellow curves, the Nike logo, etc. Patents protect only one product, whereas trademarks preserve a group of products. 

4. Trade Secrets: As the name suggests, this right contains the company’s secret information. The intellectual property rights mentioned above are open to the public, but trade secrets do not disclose the intellectual property to anyone. The insights of the business are only known to the owner, including the process, strategies, approaches or procedures. The duration of a trade secret is unlimited and is not for commercial purposes. The recipe for Coca Cola is one of the well-known examples of the trade secrets.

National IPR Policy

• On 12 May 2016, the Union Cabinet adopted a policy that complies with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) agreement with India’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). 
• The policy aims to defend the organisations’ Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).
• The national IPR policy particularly centres on the significance of IPRs as an attractive monetary resource and pushing the product as a marketable financial asset by maintaining the quality.
• It boosts the commercial value of the product.
• The policy’s objective is to create awareness about the economic, social, and cultural benefits of intellectual property rights.
• The renewal of policy should be done every five years.
• The policy maintains the provisions of Compulsory Licensing (CL).

Conclusion

Intellectual property rights focus on the product’s reliability by promoting and protecting original ideas. The law helps businesses to earn a competitive advantage over their direct competitors. The different types of intellectual property rights grant full ownership of products, leading to progress in the economy by creating various options for the public through diversified goods and services.