IPR in Biotech

Normally I post about creative rights such as music copyright and design rights. I have recently been busy working in the field of intellectual protection with Bio-Pharm. One of the ways that the same tools can be used is in the field of Biotechnology Market Research.

On this site I was able to find a section devoted to market research on Intellectual property within the pharmaceutical industry, but it only contained one report from 2003.

I believe that this situation could be an opportunity for someone willing to spend a bit of time investigating.

How to Register Copyright in the European Union

There is a lot of misinformation about copyright on the Internet with articles on how to copyright songs, copyright photos etc. all based on US law.

In the E.U you do not need to take any action to copyright any original work you create. The second you create it you automatically own the copyright.

The problem arises when you have to prove you were the original creator and that is why it can be useful to file your work with a copyright register.

#  Step 1: Decide if you really need to register the copyright on your original work. You already own the copyright, but registration will help you to prove it. If you are going to distribute your work online then registration may be a good idea.

#  Step 2: Choose a method of registration either offline or online.
–  You can register offline by visiting a lawyer or registered notary in your local community and asking him to store a sealed copy of your work. Make sure you get a signed contract stating the date of handover and that he keeps the sealed work in a secure and private location.

-You can register online at a number of different websites (for example ProveMyCopyrigt.com). Each of these will store your work in digital form and give some kind of certificate that you can use as proof of date. The difference between these registers tends to be whether you pay for an account with the company or pay for each individual piece of work you want to register.
#  Step 3: Sit back and relax. You can now verify that you are the copyright holder on your original works.

*  Learn a little about the Berne Convention on copyright. It gives you the same rights in 163 countries (including the US and all of Europe) as you do in your home country.
*  If you choose to register online with a company that offers an account based model, upload your work as you are making it, i.e drafts and work in progress as this tends to provide better proof that you are the original creator. It won’t cost you any more.

How to copyright a book

How to copyright a book and when should I start the copyright process?

As I’ve written before, as soon as you write something original like a book or even a blog post, you automatically own the copyright to it and it doesn’t need to be registered anywhere. Thanks to the Berne Convention on copyright, this rule protects you in 163 countries including the US, Europe and many more.

This is fine in theory, but if you ever got into a dispute the key factor would be who could prove they were the first person to write and therfore copyright a book. 

It would be a “brave” author who would send out their manuscripts to publishers without first having independent proof they were the original author. I would also suggest to any aspiring authors that they begin the process of registering the copyright to a book as early as possible in the writing process. By having independent proof you were the writer of each stage in the books development, you are able to show what they call the “process of a work in progress”, which no-one who has ripped you off will be able to show.

As mentioned before on this blog, there is an online service which can help you to copyright a book (not an affiliate link). ProveMyCopyright.com is a membership service which gives you 5Gb of space on their servers so that you can upload lots of drafts of your book, or several books. Each time you make something new, you simply upload it and they “digitally fingerprint” and timestamp it to show that you were in control of the work at that point in time and as such own the copyright thanks to the Berne Convention…

As an extra added FREE bonus, they also “back up” all your files on their secure server, so that incase disaster ever struck your home computer you would instantly be able to access you important files without any loss. They backup your files for an amazing 10 years if you are a member.

Intellectual Protection in Software

An interesting case recently came to the attention of the Intellectual Protection blog regarding a case of alleged copyright infringement by a large software company against a software designer from China.

Although, we don’t really cover intellectual protection in China we thought it would be interesting for our readers to hear the story of Dr. Yue in his own words. Readers can research the case for themselves and are free to make comments to carry out a discussion on the rights and wrongs of this case…

“I request your attention to the following case that may profoundly affect copyright law. My contact information is at the end of the message.

Dr. Yue, an accomplished software developer, sued Sun Microsystems for software piracy in U.S. federal court (C07-05850-JW, ND CAL). The software copyright was registered in Dr. Yue’s personal name. Sun had distributed vast number of pirated copies of Dr. Yue’s software. Evidence included defendants’ sales records and internal emails admitting the wrongdoing. In an email, a manager of Sun even warned that the unauthorized copying might cause trouble for Sun. But Sun and its subsidiary continued the piracy activity for years and even let others make unlimited copies.

The federal court ignored the evidence (including Dr. Yue’s copyright) and entered judgment in Sun’s favor. At a hearing, the presiding judge told Dr. Yue: “I am going to have you taken out if you don’t be quiet” (quoting transcript). The court prohibited Dr. Yue from representing himself, then ordered him to pay $219,949.90 to the Sun for attorney’s fees under the Copyright Act, most of which was generated after the case was terminated, including over $60,000 for Sun’s request for attorney’s fees itself.

The cases have generated a public outcry. Over 200 people from U.S., Europe and China have petitioned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal to carefully review the lower court’s decisions*. Hundreds of web sites in China had published the story and the court decision.

See http://www.american-justice.org for case information, such as the complaint and evidence, deposition and hearing transcripts, court orders and other record, including Dr. Yue’s point-by-point analysis of the court orders.

Contact: Dr. Don (Dongxiao) Yue”

Copyright Photographs, Copyright Songs, Copyright Manuscripts

One of the points that I’ve been asked about the most in my career is “how do I copyright photographs” or “how do I copyright songs?”

I of course have always said that they automatically own copyright, but I know that they would have a problem proving that in court. The answer would be to have a completly independent third party verify the time and date that they created their files.

Over the weekend a friend showed me this site called ProveMyCopyright.com which does exactly that. My favourite thing about it is that it does it completly over the internet so you don’t have to wait four to six months to get registered. Also they offer 5Gb of account space for file backups and copyright which I think is great, even more than wordpress allows, but with copyright registration too.

What you need to know about Intellectual Protection

Intellectual Protection does not have to be a mystery. Lets look at the five most useful methods of intellectual protection, Patents, Copyright, Trademarks and Design Rights.

Patents

Patents are basicly an intellectual protection reward for the inventor of a product or system to share the knowledge of how he or she done it. With the granting of a patent, the methods and technology become public knowledge and can be seen by all. In return, the holder of a patent has exclusive rights for a fixed period of time to do whatever he or she sees fits with the product including exclusive rights to commercialisation. It is possible to patent an idea. See more information in the patent section below.

Copyright

The most common form of intellectual protection is copyright. It is not possible to copyright an idea. Copyright comes into force instantly when something is created in a tangible form. This can include songs, music, photos, manuscripts, books etc. Copyright gives the creator of a work exclusive rights to reproduce and profit from that work. Copyright law is accepted by 163 countries who signed the Berne convention. Copyright can be registered online as proof that a person actually made the material in question. A name can not be copyright. See more information in the copyright section below.

Trademarks

A common form of intellectual protection used by companies are trademarks. Names and words used to trade under can be protected by Trademarks. Trademarks come in two forms a non-registered trade mark (TM) and a registered trademark (R). Non registered trademarks are free, but you have to be able to prove that you were the original claiment of the trademark in court to be able to fight off infringers. Registered trademarks have to be payed for but give more protection in court as a date of registration is known. See more information in the trademarks section below.

Design Rights

Design Rights are a similar form of intellectual protection to copyrights, but apply to things such as patterns , fabrics, forms etc. They can be unregistered or registered in a similar way to Trademarks. The first ever design right was granted in the United Kingdom in 1787. See more information in the Design Rights section below.