Intellectual Property Law



Intellectual Property Law

Introduction

The intellectual property (IP) is termed as the creative work and it is considered as the physical property or an asset. Therefore, the intellectual property falls under four categories that are copyright, trademarks, patents, and design rights. Hence, copy right is primarily applied over the work such as literary work, music, art, and or dramatic work as sound recording, typographical arrangements, or films. Since, the author has been provided with the specific rights pertaining to his work so as to prohibit the unauthorized actions taken by the external sources and in such cases, the author is entitled to take the legal actions against such infringement or theft issues. However, the trademark is the name, slogan, symbol or design which specifically identifies or recognizes the product as well as the organization. Therefore, the registered trademarks are identified by the symbols of ™ or ®. Moreover, the patents are commonly used to protect the inventions against the unauthorized implementation of the invention.

The study aims at extenuating the in depth understanding about the law of intellectual property and how United Kingdom has successfully adapt copyrights to the digital era. However, the paper also intends to give a detailed view on how digital era have become threat to the intellectual property protection and issue.

Discussion

The intellectual property is the collective name for the bundle of rights to protect the brand, technology, design, logo, art, music, confidentiality, software, topography, moral rights, rights in performance, domain names etc from being infringed or plagiarized. The IP protects the uniqueness of the brand and works to strike a balance between conflicting public interests. As the infringement of IP rights occurs when a person other than the owner, tries to exercise the exclusive right on to the product without the permission of the owner. The counterfeiters use owners' trademarks or patents illegally. IP law encompasses the variety of rights that actually shield the creativity as well as uniqueness through various different remedies. The legal definition of the term is as following:

“The rights in relation to: literary, artistic and scientific works, industrial designs, scientific discoveries, inventions in all fields of human endeavor, commercial names, trade marks, and all other rights that result from the intellectual activities in any field or industry”.

The United Kingdom has the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), established in April 2007, which is now operating with the name of The Patent Office. It is the legal government body accountable for the provision of intellectual rights in the entire United Kingdom. The IPO has the authority of issuing, examining or even rejecting the intellectual property. The IPO grants right to the owners of intellectual properties to use the different types of IPs in order to protect their ideas that includes the patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and design rights. These types can also be understood as:

Patents: the patents grant the intellectual property owner with the exclusive right to create, employ, sell, and import the invention for a limited time ...