Intellectual Property
Rights
COM188 – Study Skills & Professional
Issues
Intellectual Property Rights
 Intellectual Property Allows individuals to own their
creativity and innovation in the same way that they can
own physical property.
 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are your rights to use
and protect your intellectual property
 Due diligence
IP owners should search with due diligence to
ensure they have exclusive ownership of a
novel idea before proceeding
Intellectual Property Rights
 Intellectual Property Rights are the most
valuable assets owned, used and
developed by a company.
 IPR Includes:
Confidential Information
Patents
Trademarks
Designs
Copyrights
IPR – Confidential Information
 Confidential Information
“Information which is not public property
and public knowledge” [Greene 1948]
 This definition encompasses potentially
any category of information
(i.e. Personal Confidences, trade secrets,
sensitive government information, any or all of
which an IT professional might handle in the
course of his work, etc.)
IPR – Confidential Information

Three conditions must be satisfied before an action for
breach of confidence can succeed:
1.
2.
3.

The Information must be confidential
The information must have been disclosed in circumstance
which give rise to an obligation of confidence
There must be an actual or anticipated unauthorized use or
disclosure of the information.
The action used to prevent breach of confidence is a
civil one
IPR – Patents
 A patent for an invention is granted by
government to the inventor, giving the inventor
the right for a limited period to stop others from
making, using or selling the invention without the
permission of the inventor.
 When a patent is granted, the invention becomes
the property of the inventor, which - like any
other form of property or business asset - can be
bought, sold, rented or hired.
IPR – Patents
 Patents are territorial rights; UK Patent will only
give the holder rights within the United Kingdom
and rights to stop others from importing the
patented products into the United Kingdom.
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/whatis.htm
IPR - Patents
 Patents are given to Inventions that satisfies a
number of criteria set by the Patents Act (1977).
The invention is new;
It involves an inventive step
It is capable of industrial application
The subject matter of the invention does not fall
within an excluded class.
IPR - Patents
 The Invention must be new:
The invention must not have been disclosed or
used publicly before the date of filing the patent
application.
When discussing the invention with others, the
confidentiality of the information should be
stressed.
IPR - Patents
 The Inventive Step
More difficult to define.
The advance claimed in the patent specification
must not be obvious as anything that is obvious
is already on the public domain and not novel.
IPR – Patents
 Capable of Industrial Application
The invention MUST have a practical
application or in other words, it must have a
technical effect.
IPR – Patents
 What is not patentable?
 An invention is not patentable if it is:
a discovery;
a scientific theory or mathematical method;
an aesthetic creation such as a literary,
dramatic or artistic work;
a scheme or method for performing a mental
act, playing a game or doing business;
the presentation of information, or a computer
program.
IPR – Patents
 If the invention involves more than these abstract
aspects so that it has physical features (such as a
special apparatus to play a new game) then it may be
patentable.
 In addition, it is not possible to get a patent for an
invention if it is a new animal or plant variety; a method of
treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or
therapy; or a method of diagnosis.
More Info: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/patent.htm
Software Patents
 Allowable now in the Europe
A computer program was not excluded from patentability
if it produced, or was capable of producing, a further
technical effect beyond the normal physical interaction
between software and hardware
IBM/Computer Programs No.96305851.6 (1999)
http://www.epo.org/index.html
Software Patents – US
Example
“A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
Under the control of a client system,
- displaying information identifying the item and
- in response to only a single action being performed, sending a
request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of
the item to a server system,
under control of a single-action ordering component of the
server system
- receiving the request
- retrieving additional information previously stored for the
purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request and
- generating an order to purchase the requested item for the
purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using
the retrieved additional information and
- fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering
model”
US Patent No 5960411: Amazon “One Click”
IPR – Trademarks
 Definition found in the Trade Marks Act 1994:
A trade mark is any sign which can distinguish
the goods and services of one trader from those
of another. A sign includes, for example, words,
logos, pictures, or a combination of these.
IPR – Trademarks
 Basically, a trade mark is a badge of origin, used
so that customers can recognise the product of a
particular trader.
 To be registrable your trade mark must be:
distinctive for the goods or services which you are
applying to register it for,
and
not deceptive, or contrary to law or morality,
and
not similar or identical to any earlier marks for the same
or similar goods or services.
IPR – Design Rights
 A registered design is a monopoly right for
the appearance of the whole or a part of a
product resulting from the features of, in
particular, the:
Lines
Contours
Colours
Shape
Texture
Materials of the product or its ornamentation.
IPR – Design Rights
 To qualify for registration, your design must:
1. be new which means that it must not be the same as
any design which has already been made available to the
public,
And
2.have individual character which means that the
overall impression it produces on an informed user of the
design must differ from the overall impression produced
on such a user by any design which has already been
made available to the public. In assessing individual
character, we take into account the degree of freedom of
the designer in creating the design.
IPR – Design Rights
 IPR office cannot register designs which are:
concerned only with how a product works, or
for parts of complex products that are not visible in
normal use, or
contrary to law or morality.
 Registration can last for a maximum of 25 years
and is a property that, like any other business
commodity, may be bought, sold, or licensed. A
registered design is additional to any design right
or copyright protection that may exist
automatically in the design.
IPR Example
 To all whom it may concern:
 Be it known that I, Walter E. Disney, a citizen of the United
States, residing at Los Angeles, in the county of Los
Angeles and State of California, have invented a new,
original, and ornamental Design for a Toy or Similar Article,
of which the following is a specification, reference being
had to the accompanying drawing, forming part thereof.
 Fig. 1 of the drawing is a front elevation of the my new
design, Fig. 2 is a back elevation showing my improved
design, and Fig. 3 is a plan view of the toy design
embodied in this invention.
 I claim:
 The ornamental design for a toy or similar article
substantially as shown.
IPR Example
IPR Example
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Patent –
ring pull
Confidential information –
recipe, ingredients
Trade Mark –
Coke brand
Design –
Colour, artwork
Additional Info and Reading
 On Contracts and IPR
BOTT, F. et.al (2001) “Professional Issues in Software
Engineering”, Taylor and Francis, London. Chapters 5
and 6
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/patent.htm
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/whatis.htm
http://www.epo.org/index.html