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One of the core principles of intellectual property is that it should relate to a unique and individual creation. The international IP framework provides you with a means to reap the rewards of creative or inventive activity like this by providing you with monopolistic rights over the use of the asset you have devised. Whichever type of IP right you obtain, however, it may be open to challenge if it transpires that your creation or invention is not as unique or individual as you first thought.
When your company devises a new ‘piece’ of IP, whether it is a new potentially patentable solution to a problem, novel design, unique trading name/style or original copyright-protected content, it is important to know whether it is genuinely new or whether some other company has thought of the idea before. If your idea is not new, depending on the type of right and scope of protection, you may not have rights to use it.
It is best to know the facts as early as possible before significant sums have been invested in development so that you can decide whether to pursue your current line of activity or rethink it. This guide examines both freely available and paid commercial services for searching patent, trade mark and design databases (as copyright does not require official registration, similarly comprehensive databases do not exist for it).
As well as considering how you can use them to determine whether your idea is novel, what protection might be available for it and whether your activities might infringe anyone else’s IP, the guide discusses strategies you can employ to determine if a third party is using your IP without permission.
Once you are familiar with database searching, you will find that these services can also be used strategically. They can help you identify new areas where your innovation efforts could be profitably focused, get a better idea of what your competitors are planning, and find new potential customers/suppliers or distributors for your products or services.
If any of the intellectual property terminology used in this report is unfamiliar, you may find it helpful to refer to another guide in this series—Safeguarding Your Competitive Edge.
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To see how ChemoPower and Liquid Pay used IP/intangible assets-related information to gain valuable business insights, go to the following links:
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