Secure your Intellectual Property Rights- An Overview
Contents
With the growing rate of startups in India, there is a need to aware the citizens about the importance of protecting the Intellectual Property Rights through various methods such as Patent Registration, Trademark Registration, Copyright Registration. Novice entrepreneurs who have just started a new business and are surrounded by the huge responsibility of building up the company, Formulation of market strategies, securing investment etc need to know the importance of securing their Intellectual Property Rights not only through Patent rights but also by Trade Secrets. The central government has taken a number of initiatives to help the startups protect their Trade secrets, patents, and designs in the form of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Startup India Action Plan. This article will focus on Patent Vs Trade secrets so as to secure his/her Intellectual Property from infringement and about the steps that can thrive to establish a startup ecosystem in the country.
For additional articles related to Intellectual Property Rights such as 7 reasons why trademarks are important to your business, you can follow our blog.
Differentiation between Patent Vs Trade secrets
Let us know the difference between Patent Vs Trade secrets under the specific headings:
Patents
A Patent holder is allowed to hold property rights which are granted on an invention to exclude others from making, selling, or using the invention for their benefits. Successful business often invents as they develop a new and better process for their products that can beat the other products in the cut-throat competitive market. Before Patent filing, you can search it on Patent search whether it has already patented or not.
You can get patent for mainly three kinds. These are:
- Utility
- Design
- Plant
A utility patent is for covering any process, machine, article of manufacture or composition of matter or any new and useful improvements thereof.
A design patent is for any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacturing. On the other hand, A Plant patent covers any new variety of asexually produced plant. The Patents rights last for 20 years.
By Patent filing, the patent holder can take legal action against anyone who has copied the patented invention, design, or discovery. Without this legal protection, there is a fear of stealing your process and design.
Read more: FAQs on patent registration
Trade Secrets
A trade secret is a formula or a process related to a business information that a company keeps private to give them a business advantage over their competitors. Some of the examples of a trade secret are:
- Soda formulas
- Customer lists
- Survey results
- Computer algorithms
Likewise, the other types of Intellectual Property, you have to get a Trade secret registration for the legal protection. Despite, protection lasts only as long as you take the necessary steps to control disclosure and use of the information.
Under the trade secrets, there are certain nondisclosure agreements, restricted access to confidential information, post-employment restrictive covenants and other security practices to be maintained. Protecting yourself as well as your company is the best and wise decision that an entrepreneur can take so that no one can use your distinctive inventions, works, marks, and other ideas. In parallel to this, Physical and digital protection of ideas is also necessary.
Looking forward at the risk and cost-benefit analysis can help you to decide what’s worth protecting. It takes often a high cost to protect your Intellectual Property as well as much time. In a nutshell, make sure that your time and money are worth the investment.
For further more details you can visit our website: Legal Raasta. We also provide the services of Trademark Renewal, Trademark transfer, Trademark Objection, Patent Registration, Copyright registration. Our experts are available here to solve your query which you can send us at Email: [email protected]
You can also give us a call at 8750008585.
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New Trademark, Patent, IPR Policy in India
“Perform a free Trademark Search before applying for it.”
