INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Intellectual Property law

Intellectual Property Law

Introduction

The legal issue, which is relevant to the Just Fun Production case is intellectual property. Intellectual Property can be defined as 'creations of the human mind'. It is concerned with creating or producing something, which is new and useful, for the better utilization of global resources. This property can be sold, purchased, hired or licensed and as such rights in property created from the intellectual efforts of an individual need to be protected. Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) are legal rights governing such creations. Books, Paintings, artistic works, inventions, designs or trademarks can be cited as examples of Intellectual Property.

Industrial property includes patents, industrial designs, and trademarks while copyright include literary works and artistic works like novels, poems, musical works, plays, drawings, paintings, films among others. The copyright rights envelops literary works, dramatic works, musical and artistic works. It also covers published editions of typographical arrangements. Besides the above mentioned, it covers sound recordings and films. (Parr, 2007, 98)

Any business entering the UK market for the first time should carefully consider, and take appropriate advice on the extend of protection that it should acquire for its intellectual property, and the extent to which other intellectual property rights could prevent it from operating freely in the UK. The Copyright Act (1988) covers the following categories of subjects:

The first category of the groups protected includes literary, scientific and artistic works.

The second category of group which enjoys these rights is performances which are performed by performing artists, recordings of phonogram, and broadcast.

The third category is the invention which involves all fields of human efforts.

The fourth category is scientific inventions

The fifth category is the industrial designs, and

The sixth are trademarks and names which are used for commercial purposes. Protection of the inventors from unfair competition is also part of the right which is contained in the rights to intellectual property (The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property organization, 1967).

Domain names are allocated on a first come, first serve basis. When a domain name is registered, the business making the registration does not own that domain name, but essentially leases the name for the period of registration.

According to the UK copyright law, copyright becomes an obvious right every time an invention or new creation is produced by an individual or a company. Qualification of a work as a copyright depends on the originality of the work the work should show some degree of labour, judgment and skill. (Johnston, 2003, 57)

Discussion

Intellectual property can be defined as creations of mind such as patents or inventions, literary works and art works, names, symbols, and designs which are applied in businesses. There are two types of intellectual property namely industrial property and copyright. In addition to recognizing, and protecting overseas intellectual property rights through international treaties, the UK has its own laws for the recognizing and in some cases registering intellectual property rights.

As noted above, business names are themselves not register able, but names and logos can be protected by appropriate trade mark registration at ...