INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Intellectual Property may be, and often is, nominally divided into two categories. They are:

• Industrial Property, which includes inventions, trademarks, industrial designs and confidential information; and

• Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, architectural designs, websites, catalogues, manuals, plans, graphics, some databases and computer software.

Copyright law protects only the form of expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves, whereas Industrial Property, the novel ideas, solutions and innovations is generally protected by registration under the appropriate legislative scheme irrespective of whether or not there has been any expression of the idea.

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HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?

We can assist you in protecting your IP from unscrupulous companies and individuals and advise on how you can commercially exploit your intellectual efforts. For example, we can draft, craft and negotiate licence agreements, assignments of copyright and advise and act on infringements. Examples of agreements and licences include:

• Publishing licences and agreements with or without royalty and commission clauses

• Contribution agreements

• Editing agreements

• Translation agreements

• Dramatisation licences

• Assignments of copyright in existing and future literary works

• Agreements to commission artistic works

• Assignments of copyright in photographs, sculptures, architect’s plans and designs etc

• Patent and know-how licence agreements

• Assignments and agreements for assignment of patents