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Tangible assets like a shop, jewellery, money, investments, vehicles etc are not the only types of property that one can own and claim safeguards under the law. There are other types of property too which are provided for by law and protected within the legal framework and these are termed intellectual property, which can be secured against infringement. Copyrights, trademarks and patents are the three main categories of intellectual property.

Copyrights are intellectual property dealing with rights of an author or an artist over his or her original piece of work. This right may be awarded for music, films, videos and other forms of creative expressions and not just the literary or published material. It provides the owners with several rights including monetary and moral rights besides the right of being acknowledged as the creator of the piece.

In contrast, trademarks accord the one who has registered it, the safety over certain graphical representations, text or marks which identify the creator or source of products to thwart replication and thus infringement. They safeguard the trademark owners from being economically exploited by unscrupulous elements.

The third kind of intellectual property right is the patent, which is bestowed upon inventors to safeguard their inventions and creations. Patents are valid for a predetermined period within which the holder can enforce his sole right to sale and other commercial use of his invention.

Some other, less often enforced intellectual property rights are also safeguarded by the law. To cite some examples of these rare intellectual properties, they can be some special understanding carried forward by a particular family only; company secrets like recipes behind successful products; and location based symbols or representations to denote a product arising from that location, like Champagne.

These three kinds of intellectual property are quite different from one another for the most part but also possess certain commonalities. All of these are safeguarded within the provisions of the law and the rightful owners can take legal action in a court of law and claim compensation in case of any violation.

Discover more about Trademark Registration Singapore and discover how does an Intellectual Property protection increase the net worth of your business very fast.

If you look at the books of large companies these days you will discover that their intellectual property (IP) adds a enormous amount of money to the balance sheet. In fact most companies fixed assets are minute in comparison to the brand and IP value. This tells us something very interesting – yes – how much more would your business be worth if you invested more in intellectual property recognition and registration?

When a company strategically identifies, maintains and secures its intellectual property rights then this can plainly have a major affect on the company in terms of its overall operation, including its ability to attract investors, enter into specific business partnership, and ultimately increase its value when it comes to sale or company merger.

Large businesses who have mega-brands like McDonalds and Pepsi are often cited when it comes to their brand value as out-valuing their fixed assets hundreds of times, yet it is easy to forget how these businesses also became so big.

We live in an information world now. Information companies like Google can be worth a few billion dollars a few years after creation only because information is now so valuable. Information is a tradable asset only when it is protected by IP laws and other laws. Every company, big or small should take intellectual property seriously. It is one of the best investments literally you can make with a company if the intellectual property (IP) value is capitalized within the company and added to the balance sheet.

It is highly recommended for companies of all sizes to be aware of IP issues and create special schemes that will proactively ensure that their intellectual property (IP) will at all times be properly legally protected.

Here are a few areas to help you start focusing on by first identifying the areas that you are creating intellectual property (IP) in:

1. Trademarks – these protect parts of your general brand such as catchwords, pictures, names.

2. Copyrights – these cover the protection of expressive items such as documents, books, images, videos, sound recordings etc.

3. Trade secrets – these protect proprietary information, internal know-how, systems and operations that are deemed to give you a business competitive edge

4. Patents and industrial designs which protect specific types of ideas and inventions and processes

Considering the above items the first step that you need to do is identifying existing intellectual property within your company. You may be amazed by how much you may have. Once all sources of a company\’s IP have been identified, processes should be put in place that enable the company to easily keep track of all existing intellectual property (IP) and all new IP . Then someone needs to be given the responsibility to manage the IP.

Once the key intellectual property has been identified then the next step is to look at what should be registered to protect it legally. This is where a great patent lawyer comes in to play. Good intellectual property attorneys don\’t come cheap but considering the value that is created then it pays off to invest for all your major intellectual property.

Discover more about Trademark Registration Singapore and uncover how does a trademark lawyer and IP protection add value to your business very fast.

A trademark enables firms to protect their exclusive ownership of their logos or brand names. For the legal recognition of the brand name, the trademark has to be certified and approved with the trademarks and patents authority in your country. A registered trademark serves as a notice of its approval by law, thereby preventing any unscrupulous persons from making use of it as it is or in any other form that may bear a close similarity such that it can be mistaken for the original mark.

It is highly recommended to get your brand name duly registered as soon as you have made a final decision on it. If you postpone the registration, there is a chance that someone else will register a resembling or even the exact name before you do and you will have to relinquish your right of its use.

The first thing needed for successful registration of a brand name involves a basic check for the availability of the chosen name. You should do a comprehensive search on whether some other company has the same name registered. This can be done by using the list provided by the registration authority.

The following step is obtaining the requisite form for registration and filling up information like the name of your firm, the kind of product or service that it provides, and your office address. These details then need to be submitted to the authority, usually along with an application fee. However, if you do not carry out the basic trademark existence check beforehand, the authorities will have the power to forfeit your fee of application after rejecting your claim.

Once you have given them your application, you should be careful as to correctly reply to the questions asked by the authorities. Any such queries should be answered within the stipulated time. If your application is accepted, you will obtain a certificate from the concerned authorities that will give you the lawful ownership over the trademark in addition to the right to take legal action against infringement of the same.

Discover more about Trademark Registration Singapore and discover how does an Intellectual Property protection increase the net worth of your business very fast.

The term trademark stands for certain symbols or texts that distinguish the products of one company from the other. The main objective of trademarks is to prevent the customers from getting confused about the origin of a product that they plan to buy.

A trademark must be exclusive and distinct enough for the consumers to recognize it quickly even in a crowd of similar goods in the market. The distinctiveness of a trademark can be determined on the basis of its placement in one of the trademark groups – descriptive, fanciful, generic, and suggestive.

A descriptive mark is one that provides description of a product with respect to its quality or features like smell, functionality, form etc. However, marks that are descriptive are not as distinctive as some other marks and hence, they are not usually capable of being trademarked. however, if the mark has attained a secondary meaning that is more well known among the customers, it can be successfully trademarked.

Suggestive marks are indicators towards a particular product feature or quality. However, it is mostly the case that the mark and the product do not display any obvious relation and the customers might need to identify the connection between the two. For instance, the product name known as ‘Hush Puppies’ indicates a comfortable shoe range that protects your feet from becoming sore. The underlying reason behind the name is that ‘barking dogs’ is slang for sore feet in some places in America.

On the other hand, fanciful marks are those that are not linked to the product. For example, the use of trademark ‘Apple’ with a symbol of a half eaten apple is in no way related to the computers sold under the mark. In a similar way, fanciful marks are those that come from the creative imagination of certain people or come from old languages like Latin.

Finally, generic marks are those which represent a very broad category of products like ‘olive oil’ and are granted no protection under the trademark laws.

Discover more about Trademarks and learn how does an Patents protection increase the net worth of your business very fast.