Innovation
Business Extra Ready to help you innovate
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Introduction To Business Extra. by Patrick Blunt (Director). What we do? How it Helps You? What You can Gain? |
What is innovation?
“Innovation,[is] the successful exploitation of ideas, into new products, processes, services or business practices” – (DTI Innovation Unit)
Why is it important to Innovate?
How can we help?
looking to innovate.
Take advantage of our innovation services to:
Convert ideas into new business opportunities
Bringing new products and services to market
Re-evaluation of existing products or services
Improve performance and profitability of your organisation and employees
Maintain and obtain competitive advantage to achieve growth
Aim: a joint DTI and Design Council initiative to discover what makes an innovative business tick and to share the lessons learned from their success. Living Innovation shows how, through a commitment to innovation, UKcompanies can out perform their competitors, introduce new and exciting products and services, and meet and exceed market expectations.
A Living Innovation publication can also be obtained by contacting the DTI Publications Order line Tel: 0870 1502 500 or E-mail: publications@dti.gsi.gov.uk quoting URN 00/946 (source Living Innovation website) more details at: www.livinginnovation.org
2) Living Innovation – self-assessment tool
To find out how innovative your company is try the Living Innovation self-assessment diagnostic. Free.
By completing it, you will be able to compare your organisation’s culture, management, processes and performance with those of the leading firms investigated in Living Innovation.
Diagnostic Tool can be found at: http://www.lidiagnostic.com/
The Patent Office website provides a comprehensive guide to intellectual property. The Patent Office has a comprehensive database of Intellectual Property information covering Copyright, Designs, Patents and Trade Marks.
More details at: http://www.ukpats.org.uk/
NESTA (The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) is a source of funding and useful information. They help fill a funding gap by investing in outstanding ideas and the people who have them, often at a much earlier stage than other
funders. The application is a two stage process. Stage one and two are online completion of application forms.
More details available from: http://www.nesta.org.uk/index.html
Intellectual Property – Protection
Extract from the UK Patent website:
More details and to do patent search please visit:http://www.ukpats.org.uk
What is a patent?
A patent is a pact between an individual and the state. The state grants the individual the right to prevent anyone from making, using, selling or importing his/her invention for up to 20 years. In return, the details of the patent application are made public 18 months after it is filed.
- A patent can be used to prevent competitors from trading in articles or using methods covered by the patent, so patent owners can charge a premium for their products.
- The owner of a patent can earn an income from his/her invention through royalties paid on licensed products.
- A patent can be bought and sold like any other asset.
An invention can be a new product, a new process, a new apparatus for performing a process or, in certain circumstances, a new use of a known product.
- New
- Not obvious in the light of what has been done before, and
- Have a practical application.
Many inventions are simply improvements upon a prior invention. If the prior invention is less than 20 years old, it may itself be protected by a patent which is still in force.
An invention cannot be patented if knowledge of it is already in the public domain. To be granted a patent, an invention must not have been published or disclosed anywhere in the world before an application is made.
Inventors wanting to study earlier patents to help them with their own R&D can access databases like Esp@cenet for free from this website.
In the UK, a patent is enforced by bringing legal proceedings in a court of law. If successful, such action can result in an injunction to stop further infringement as well as an award of damages in respect of past infringement.
A United Kingdom patent only grants rights within the UK. To stop someone making use of an invention abroad, inventors must apply for patents in the countries in which they require protection.
The European single market does not override national patent systems. The borders are still there for patented inventions.
For more detailed information please visit http://www.ukpats.org.uk/patent/index.htm
Trade Marks
What is a trade mark?
A trade mark is a symbol or sign used by a trader to distinguish his or her product or service from those of other traders. Trade marks can help customers and traders to recognise a business and identify it with the quality of product or service for which the company is known. Trade marks can be words, logos, colours, shapes, sounds or jingles which help to create a distinctive image for a company.
Trade marks are essential for companies to protect their brands, reputations and business.
Trade mark protection is important for any company with a recognisable identity. With markets becoming increasingly competitive and companies frequently offering very similar products, it is important for businesses to make themselves and their products recognisable from their competitors. Companies use their brands to achieve this distinctiveness.
Brands are central to marketing programmes and it is a trade mark that protects the distinctive elements that make up the market identity element of most brands. Many celebrities seek to profit through merchandising using the reputation of their name. By registering their name as a trade mark, they can control the way their reputation is used to endorse products in the marketplace.
A registered trade mark involves the owner of the mark registering it with the Trade Marks Registry as a mark applying to one or more classes of goods or services. Owners of registered trade marks have the exclusive right to the use of their marks in the territory in which the mark is registered. Unregistered trade marks do not benefit from such formal protection.
International marketing practices mean that in the UK, registered trade marks are identified with the symbol ® whilst unregistered marks are followed by the letters TM.
To be registrable, the trade mark must act as a badge of origin for a product or service. It should not be misleading or easily confused with other marks. Sometimes a mark may be eligible because it has been in use for some time and is recognisable as belonging to somebody already.
Laudatory terms may not be registered, nor may descriptive terms in the relevant class (e.g., ‘apple’ in grocery), so that all traders retain basic freedoms.
A trade mark can first be registered for ten years and then renewed for a fee at ten yearly intervals. Subject to renewal, the state allows protection by trade marks only whilst they are in constant, relevant use.
How is a trade mark enforced?
Generally, in the UK, a trade mark is enforced by bringing legal proceedings in a court of law. If successful, an injunction can be obtained to prevent further infringement and an award of damages may be made in respect of past infringement. In counterfeiting cases, the assistance of regulatory authorities such as Customs, Trading Standards and the Police can be used to have the infringing goods seized.
Unregistered trade marks, e.g., business names, are generally protected by the common law principle of “passing off”. If a name is used sufficiently to establish a reputation for trading in a given field and a competitor appears under the same or a similar name, an action can be taken in the courts on the basis that the competition is falsely passing off their goods and services as yours.
For more detailed information please visit http://www.ukpats.org.uk/tm/index.htm
What is a registered design?
Once a new design is registered the owner has the right to stop others from making or selling the same or similar designs. Where products are distinguished in the marketplace by their appearance (e.g., furniture) design registrations can help. The registrable design may be:
- A new article (e.g., the shape of a kettle)
- A new part of an article (e.g., an elaborate handle for aknife)
- A new two-dimensional pattern or ornament suitable for use on an article (e.g. a floral pattern on plate, or curtains, or clothing etc.).
Initially the right lasts for five years, renewable every five years to a maximum of 25 years. Like any other business commodity, it can be sold or licensed under terms agreed with the registered owner. The design protected by registration can also enjoy parallel protection through copyright or unregistered design right if appropriate.
How are designs registered?
An application for design registration only requires a few pictures showing different views of the design, and an indication as to what the design might be applied to (though this does not limit the legal protection just to that application). Registration is possible even for handicraft items and one-off items.
There must have been a ‘freedom of design’ in the creation, so where a jug has a distinctive shape it is registrable because it could have had many other shapes and still have been a jug. However, where form is dictated by function, or dictated by the need to fit with other parts (e.g.: a brake pad which needs to fit in the callipers) no registration is possible.
The design must be new on the day the application is filed, that is to say not likely to be previously known anywhere in the world by a designer working in the same field. Furthermore, the design must have ‘individual character’.
This means it must not give the notion of ‘déjà vu’ in the mind of an ‘informed user’, namely one familiar with the product in question who is not a designer. For example, if a stationer would not easily discern the differences between an existing pen and a new pen seeking registration, the latter would fail.
The design will still be judged as novel on the filing date even if the designer has disclosed their design (e.g., sold it) at any time in the 12 months prior to filing. This one-year ‘grace period’ allow designers to test the market before deciding if registration is appropriate.
However, any disclosures by others of designs which are the same or similar, even if they occur during those most recent 12 months, will count against the applicant when assessing novelty.
At the moment there is no all-embracing international registration for designs. To ensure protection for a design outside the
UK, separate applications for registrations need to be made in each country in which you want protection.
However, Europe has recently harmonised its rules so the same registrability criteria and duration of protection now
apply in all EC member states. A single EU-wide right, administered by OHIM in Alicante, became available during 2003.
For more detailed information please visit:http://www.ukpats.org.uk/design/index.htm
Copyright
What is copyright?
Copyright is a property right that protects original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, published editions of works, sound recordings, films and broadcasts.
Copyright protection in the UK exists automatically if the work has been “fixed” in some manner – if it physically exists – in the form of a manuscript or computer program for example. There is no formal registration system for copyright in the
UK.There is no copyright in a name, title, slogan or phrase, although these may be eligible for registration as trademarks.
Copyright cannot protect an idea, it may protect the work that expresses an idea but not the idea behind it. Copyright
in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. Sound recordings, broadcasts and cable programmes are protected for 50 years and published editions are protected for 25 years.
These terms only apply to work originating in the UK or another state of the European Union. In all other cases the term of protection is that granted by the country of origin of the work.
Although some countries require that work be marked with the international © mark, followed by the name of the copyright owner and year of publication, this is not essential in the UK or most other European countries.
As a form of intellectual property, copyright can be bought, sold or otherwise transferred. Copyright owners can choose to license others to use their works whilst retaining ownership over the rights themselves.
Copyright exists independently of the medium on which it is recorded. Buying a copy of a book or CD does not necessarily give you the right to make further copies – even if they are for private use. Photocopying a work, scanning a work to produce an electronic copy or downloading a copy which is in electronic form all involve copying the work and will also require permission.
Permission to use copyright material is obtained by approaching the copyright owner. The owner of copyright in a work is usually its author or creator. However, the copyright in an employee’s creations is automatically assigned to their employer. Conversely, a contractor retains the copyright in any commissioned work unless their contract is explicit to the contrary.
There are certain circumstances where permission to copy or use copyright material is not needed. Limited use of works is permitted for research and private study, criticism or review, reporting current events, judicial proceedings and teaching in schools. However, copying large amounts of material or making multiple copies will require permission. Publication of excerpts, such as quotes, from a copyright work will require an acknowledgement.
Copyright law applies on the Internet as it does to paper.
It is an infringement of copyright to post material on a web site without the consent of the copyright holder. This applies whether the site is on an intranet (accessible only to members of an organisation) or the Internet.
The World Wide Web is subject to copyright in many different ways:
Web pages and any textual articles contained on a web page are separate literary works. Graphics are generally artistic works, whilst any sound files are sound recordings which contain separate musical works. In a single web page there are likely to be many different copyrights.
To copy and paste anything from a web page into a document of your own or to print out a web page, you should obtain the permission of the copyright owner. Many web sites contain a copyright notice detailing how the material they contain may be used. Permission may already have been granted within this notice.
If you include a hyperlink on a web page, although you are not actually copying, you may be authorising somebody else to make a copy of the material which you are linking to. Permission should always be obtained before a link is established. Webmasters are usually happy for other sites to link to theirs, as more links mean more hits to their site.
How is copyright enforced?
Because copyright is not registered like the other three IP rights, three hurdles must be overcome to bring an action against infringers. First, you must convince a court that your complaint concerns copying: if another’s work is the same or similar to yours by coincidence then you have no case against them. Second, you must show that you own the copyright in the
original work you allege has been copied. Finally, you must show that the work in question falls within the scope of those creative works afforded protection under the Copyright, Designs & Patent Act 1988.
For more detailed information please contact: The Copyright Directorate on 020 7596 6566 or visit: http://www.ukpats.org.uk/copy/index.htm