IP Australia's education for the VET sector
So firstly, I;d like to say thank you very much to *Eva?* for inviting me because many people, they hear the term IP, or Intellectual Property, they think it's such a, a technical concept - something that really doesn’t apply to most people, that it’s for the really crazy inventors out there who are doing patentable things- weird and wonderful inventions; and what I’d really like to tell you today is that it really applies across the board. Basically, to every single business, almost every single professional person will have some form of Intellectual Property; and the problem is, often it’s not captured, it’s not recognized as Intellectual Property, but people don’t realize that it’s an asset.
So, I'd really like to tell you, briefly, who IP Australia is (if you don't know already). What Intellectual Property is briefly, and I apologise for those of you who really are up to speed on IP. I won't go into it too much, but just give you a quick overview of Intellectual Property; and then the crucial one is why it is so important to business, and by business I don't just mean people in, you know - I spose for our purposes SMEs, are the big one, but also engineers and artists and designers, all sorts of people who are, in most cases in some form of business.
Then, I'll go through the IP units, and I've just handed around an um, a little sort of fact sheet, I suppose, on our IP units that IP Australia's developed. Then I'll just tell you what to do, if this sounds like something you'd like your students to learn, or at least have the opportunity to learn, how you actually sign up for these and I'll also just talk about some of the support and the resources that IP Australia has to help you, I suppose, on that path.
IP Australia, this is the building in Canberra. A thousand staff, federal Government agency that administers Intellectual Property rights. So, ah we deal with Patents, Trade Marks, registered Designs and Plant Breeders Rights. We are responsible for actually registering those rights. So, even if a person goes to a lawyer or an attorney to file an application for a Trade Mark, for example, that Trade Mark will ultimately be examined by IP Australia, we put a stamp on it and give the rights out to the person who is applying, for a fee. So, that's our main business.
So, as I said examines applications, one other thing that we do, that's a very important role we play, is we actually provide IP Policy advice to Government. So, whenever the laws on Intellectual Property are changing, we're often the ones behind it, we drive that change, or we do a lot of research to see what other countries are doing, for example - how we can make sure that we're not lagging behind relative to other countries et cetera in protection of Intellectual Property. The final one, and that's my role, I suppose is to really raise the awareness of Intellectual Property amongst (as I said) the business community, the broader community; Artists, everybody who has some sort of Intellectual Property, for them to realise they actually have it and what to do about it.
So, in a very broad sense, I suppose, Intellectual Property, it's not, as I said people often think it's some kind of really intellectual, highly technical concept, but really, it's any form of innovation or creativity that's applied in a kind of a business setting to make money in some form. It is a form of an intangible business asset, and the problem with it is, because it's intangible you often don’t see it, unless you know what you’re looking for you might not realise that it’s actually a form of property just like a building or machinery or even staff or know-how. So as I said as well every business every artist photographer, engineer, scientist, inventor, designer - they will all have Intellectual Property, ah and some are protecting it and others are not; and the ones that are protecting it are really the ones that are getting value out of it, they're getting a return back on the investment and the creative effort that they are putting in.
So, just a very brief over-view. A lot of people, when they hear the term Intellectual Property, they think its one thing. So, they think it's a Patent, and another word for a patent might be a Copyright. That's a very common problem that we encounter in our work at IP Australia. That people sort of have a vague idea of what it means, but they don't realise that Intellectual Property is actually, sort of, a very broad umbrella term, and under that broad term come lots of different specific IP rights, which cover different specific type of things. So, for example:
One of them is Copyright. So Copyright is one that we are probably all familiar with, from reading novels and looking online and seeing the Copyright notices and the symbols. It’s an interesting one because it’s automatic; you don’t have to apply to get Copyright. If I write a novel, I automatically have Copyright protection for that novel. As long it's original and it satisfies certain criteria. So, Copyright protects artistic works, so art works, literary works and musical works; and it actually lasts a long time so the life of the author plus 70 years so it’s a very long period of protection, and as I said you don’t actually have to seek it, so one very simple thing that people don’t do, is just even it put a little Copyright symbol on work that is original, just to sort of show that they are aware of the fact that this is a Copyright work and will potentially take action is somebody tries to copy them. Copyright is not actually one of the IP rights that we, as IP Australia are responsible for, I suppose because it’s not registrable. You don't actually have to file to apply, pay a fee, have it examined (that actually happens in the US) but in Australia it is actually governed by another Government department. The Attorney General’s Department.
That aside, now, we as IP Australia cover Patents, Trade Marks, Registered Designs and Plant Breeders Rights. Patents and Trade Marks are probably the ones that you are most familiar with, that you have probably heard about. Patents protect the function of something, so if somebody invents something that's new, has never been done before, is novel, is inventive, well, and as long as it covers a particular defined subject matter and is actually, can be manufactured, and be replicated, I suppose, it's no use having a patent on something that's just an idea, or something that you can't do again, then you can get a Patent.
So, a Patent lasts for 20 years, they are quite expensive and they are, again, for a whole variety of different types of inventions, again, I think what we think about is the light bulb or some very high technology solution, I suppose, to a problem that we have in life. We think that, automatically is a Patent, someone is a patentee, that's what they’ve done; but what I wanted to show you is something like this has a Patent on it, so this is a thing I picked up in Japan. It’s a banana holder. Every Patent has to relate to a problem, so there is a problem we face and then, a Patent addresses that problem and provides a solution. The problem with this is soggy bananas in your bag when you're carrying them, for example to work, many times it’s happened to me where I look in, it’s a brown banana, it’s squashed, it doesn’t smell so good. This is something a Canadian company came up with and it’s a banana guard, so they’ve figured out a way to have, I think apparently, they say that 95% of bananas will fit into this, the shape of them; they’ve done research and it’s a sturdy plastic, its got holes et cetera. So, the point of this is just to say to you that many businesses come up with novel, strange and wonderful inventions like this or innovations. They don’t realise that they can actually patent it, but this is Patented in the United States, in Canada, it’s actually made in Canada and I bought it in Japan so it's a good example of Internationalisation, I suppose, at work, but I wanted to raise it to show you that it's possible to Patent things that are fairly, you would think, pretty simple in a way, but no one came up with it before.
OK, so that's Patents in a nutshell. Trade Marks, is probably the most widely spread and applicable to every sort of business that's out there, because they are the brand. We heard the word brand a lot but we maybe don't hear the word Trade Mark a lot, and it’s basically the same thing. It's the legal form of protection for a brand, and a Trade Mark is a really unique business asset and one that a lot of companies don't realise they have, but it can last forever, that is the only registered IP Right that doesn't have a time limit. You register it initially for 10 years and then you can renew it and renew it and renew it and renew it, so, some of the Trade Marks we’ve got on the IP register they're a hundred years old, because they've just been renewed and renewed and renewed, and some of the older ones, let's say Arnott's, their logo is still in use today and they have still got protection for it.
So, Trade Marks protect brands, not just brand names but also a logo, a drawing, a slogan, even things like smells and tastes and colours are becoming possible to be Trade Marked. So, it's really expanding out and the whole thing is, does it function as something that the consumer recognises as coming from your company. You know, the letter "A" in TAFE. you know, if somebody saw that, potentially they might immediately associate that letter, for example, with TAFE. The same applies, so for example, this is an interesting one, the Toblerone chocolate, is actually a registered Trade Mark. Obviously, the name Toblerone is registered, they they’ve also got a registration for the box, the triangle box, the argument is, well, if you'd taken away the Toblerone the word, you would still recognize it as Toblerone. So, it's functioning as a badge of origin is what it's called, but you know that's the company that does Toblerone, Is it Kraft? Yes it’s Kraft. And that’s why, you know, they often have these Christmas promotions, where they don't even have the name they’ve just covered it with something else, and you know as a consumer that it's Toblerone. They’ve actually also registered as a Trade Mark, the chocolate on the inside, the triangle with the little shapes that come off.
So, really interesting and this was sort of my area, that I specialised in and it's very interesting how many things function as a Trade Mark and again, many businesses don’t realise, they think they have a business name, they’ve got to register the business name obviously to get into business, in a state and they think that's enough. They think that gives them protection for that name, but unfortunately it doesn't. So, only a Trade Mark is a legal property right for that word or that name. A business name registration is purely almost an administrative tick, yes I’m registered to do business in a particular company or State, but you need a Trade Mark to actually be able to exclude other people form encroaching on your territory. Another difference is, a Trade Mark is Australia-wide, so if you register a Trade Mark you will be covered for New South Wales and Queensland and every other state, but not other countries. So, if you want rights in other countries you have to file these IP rights in those other countries as well.
Designs, the IP Right that most people haven;t heard about and just out of interest, have any of you heard about Registered designs? No, and it’s really interesting because it can be such a powerful IP right, particularly for those maybe in the industrial design world, engineers certainly, fashion designers and people don’t realise that this exists. So, the Registered design is almost if you imagine the flip-side of a Patent, a Patent protects the function or something, where as a Registered design protects the look of it. So, purely the ascetics behind it. So that coke bottle, this is actually an example of a lot of IP in one thing. It’s got Copyright, doesn't have a Patent, it's got Trade Marks, it's got Registered designs. So the bottle shape, for example, could be a registered design, because of the asthetics and it doesn't matter whether it functions in a better way (which you'd need for a Patent) but it's just the look of it, that's protected.
So if you think about companies like Breville, Sunbeam the kitchen appliances, I mean there is a huge number of Registered designs for those. Cars, shape of cars, shape of wheels, garments, dresses hats, shoes, and proc shoes - all of those things can be Registered as designs as long as they are new and distinctive. They last for 10 years, you initially file it for 5 years and then you can renew for another 5 and that’s it. So, it's a short, much shorter term of protection; but the point of that is ascetics change quickly and they say, well you don’t need so long a monopoly to cover yourself for ascetics that will be changed, you know if we saw a coffee machine from 10 years ago we might not like it so much, we might want to move on et cetra.
Plant Breeders Rights are very niche, I suppose, to Plant Breeders, to people in the horticultural Industry. Maybe less interesting for your students unless they are specialising in that field. So, basically they protect new plant varieties. You can actually file a Plant Breeder Right, which is quite similar to a Patent, in some ways. It lasts 20-25 years and it protects the person who invents a new plant, who cross-breeds, for example two different types of plants to create something new.
Now, there are other sorts of IP which, again, we don’t cover necessarily, because things like trade secrets and confidential information and recipes things like that, they’re not covered by IP Australia because you don't have to apply for those rights; but they are also Intellectual Property. Imagine if your business has a secret, so this is a good example as well. Coke-Cola has kept the recipe of their drink secret.
So, just a very quick snapshot of different business assets and what might apply to those assets.
A website, images and text might be protected by Copyright.
Names - Trade Marks, invention - Patents, designs - Designs, Formulas and recipes might be as I said; you can choose the Patens path or the trade secret path. Software is a bit of a funny one, it can be, in certain cases protected by Copyright, trade secrets and in certain cases, a Patent, probably don’t have time to go into that today. Same with Databases can be depending on what kind of database, how much work has been put into the database. Sometimes it can be a Copyright and sometimes a trade secret, and Plant Breeders Rights.
So, first thing. Why is IP so valuable to business owners, business people? Well, the thing is it gives you a monopoly. So, if you register a right, you have, almost like a deed of title to your house, for that particular period of time. So, it gives the business a competitive advantage; and it can really attract customer who are loyal to this particular brand, for example, and other brands won’t be able to come too close and have a name that’s too similar to this business. So, we can protect a market share, it can be a bit of a buffer around a business and it can really help the first mover advantages. If you’re first in the market place and you are getting better and better, you are attracting customers, well no one will be able to ride on your coat tails (theoretically). The other thing is, it can be sold. Just like your house can be sold. So you can sell an IP right. You can sell a Trade Mark, you can assign a Patent and you can also license them. You can retain the ownership of a brand name, for example, but you can license it to other people. So Nudie Juice, you’ve heard of Nudie juice, I'm sure most of you have had it. They actually did a really smart thing where they licensed their brand name onto ice cream, and they actually, weren’t the ones that bought a manufacturing plant and started manufacturing the ice cream. All they did was, they licensed the name to enable another company to brand their ice cream with Nudie, and they got royalties for that. So, it's a really good idea once a business becomes stronger and better and better, then people will be attracted to that business and want to use that name for something.
This is another example, these phones the Pantone brand. I don’t know if you've heard of the colour identification system, was licensed onto a range of phones in Japan as well, so, again, an example of that.
If you have Intellectual Property protection around your business, well, you can actually take action against someone who is copying you, legitimately; because it's your property and you are saying to someone stop using my property, just like you would if somebody came onto you land.
Just a quick example is Billabong. Now, the Billabong, a couple of years ago was valued at 2.9 billion dollars, the company. The tangible assets, when they were all counted up. So there is clearly a gap between 1.2 billion and 2.9 billion, so what is that gap? The intangible assets, so the intangible assets were 1.7 billion, worth more than their actual tangible assets; and where does that come from? It comes from the companies good will, the Designs, the Trade Marks, the branding, the fact that consumers like it, the fact that it's popular amongst surfers and a lot of other people, so 58% of the value of that company is actually the brand and what they've done to the brand and they’ve licensed. They are a very good example of a company who is really protecting their Intellectual Property and their licensing it out and making benefits, taking benefits out of it.
We won't go into these… but some of Australia small businesses know about Intellectual Property, or at least they've registered Trade Marks. So, these are examples from the Australian Trade Marks register. You can see Boost, Dinosaur Designs, AussieBum, Bakers Delight, RedBalloon, Jim’s Mowing. Ah, they've all registered their Trade Marks at least. They've taken that first step to say hey I want to protect my name, my brand, this sort of logo; he's now expanded it out, obviously to Jim's cleaning and all sorts of very successful franchises.
Now, that's the positive side. Some businesses are doing this. Now, the troubling thing is that a lot of businesses still are not, they don't realise that something called Intellectual Property exists, they’re too busy, they don't really care, and they don't see the value of it to them. A survey that we did a few years ago said that of small businesses, 34%, so 1 in 3, had no idea about IP protection, they were not at all aware of Trade Marks, Patents, Designs, nothing. 1 in 3, no idea. These are business people who are out their in the world, and then sometimes you wonder why so many businesses fail and, obviously there are so many things a small business person has to worry about; and I don’t pretend to say that IP is the most important, but it is certainly one of a suite of things that they must think about to really push themselves along, to get bigger. Medium businesses were not much better. 1 in 4 were not at all aware of IP protection; and when I go through and I do these things, and I look at what companies have, you’d be surprised some of your best known companies might not have even thought about Trade Marks, for example. I know there’s certainly some very high profile fashion designers who haven’t got a trade mark and you’d think that’s just- It may not ever be a problem, but if it is a problem. It’s likely to ruin their whole business.
So, what IP Australia did, a few years ago, is we devised, we thought how do we teach these small business, medium business people about IP? I am one person, I can only do so much in New South Wales and I can get out there and do a lot of presentations for students, for businesses, for stake holders all sorts of groups of people, business associations but very limited in resources, there's not so much I can do by myself, and same with my colleagues in the other states. So, we identify, how are we going to do this on a higher scale? And we thought, people go to TAFEs people go to TAFEs for business training, to learn skills that will be invaluable to them when they start on their job, on their careers path and they start their own businesses. At the same time, other registered training organisations are important. So, there is a lot of places that people go already to learn. So we thought why we don't try to tap into that and try to help those people who are already going to a TAFE or an RTO to learn about Intellectual Property as part of their course. We initially started thinking about the business qualifications. So, the certificate 4's and the diplomas and thinking about offering an elective there about Intellectual Property so people could be exposed to it while they're studying so when they leave they might think, so hang on I heard about that trade mark thing I might do that. So we developed a number of different subjects which can be offered and we partnered with the Innovation Business Skills of Australia to develop this training package, for the VET sector; and the thing is as well, it’s interesting, because obviously a lot of your students are school leavers but then again a lot of your students might be people who are part time students who are already in business, who are already working. So, it’s almost getting those two sets of people which is great because some of them are already in business and others are not yet and hopefully, when they get in there, when they learn the skills, then they’ll learn what to do from day 1 and with IP it's very important to get things right at the beginning because it’s really a time bomb if you don't get it right from the start. So, we’ve had it endorsed by the National Quality Council and it can be accessed on the NTIS.
The 8 units that we’ve got are, they'’re in your booklets, there’s broader ones, and there’s more narrow ones depending on the IP rights that we discussed before. So a very sort of, the easiest one I suppose is complying with organisation requirements for protection and use of IP and that was sort of mapped to a Certificate 3; and then they go into more detail, so you’ve got one on copyright, Inventions and Innovations which are a very large part of our Patents, brands and business identity which are more about Trade Marks, Innovative designs, Designs, and then there is protecting use in tangible assets in small business, and that’s been quite a popular one, so specifically in small business. Then managing IP, that’s a slightly more sophisticated one because it’s once you’ve registered it, how do you manage it, if you’ve got lots of Trade Marks, what do you do? What about when you’re going overseas? Are you going to register overseas? What are your plans going to be to managing it and then making money out of it? Then, developing and implementing strategies for IP management, which again, is the one step above.
So, probably I can say that this one has been very successful, this one about intangible assets; but it all depends. So, for example if you are doing a fashion course an interesting one to offer might be the innovative designs, because a lot of the fashion designers, they don't even know they can protect the dress they design. They have no idea, they just think, they take it on the chin. If someone copies them, it's not great but too bad, but they can actually do something about it. Same with Copyright for, example in a graphic design package. Using Copyright would be really important and again, or a broader one that covers all of the different IP rights.
We also have skill sets which are shorter; I think it's a 3 day course. So it’s offered for people who maybe are already full time employees and they just want a short snapshot about these IP rights, and they don't want to go through a whole entire course. So, again we've got small business, Copyright, Trade Marks, Patents, Designs and then this more advanced one about strategic IP management, if people already have a bit of an understanding of IP rights.
Now, the support that we have created and are providing, basically we have facilitation and assessment kits which come for every subject and in those kits, there’s a very comprehensive list of resource, where to find further information about these topics. There are proposed assessment plans etcetera, so there's a whole kit there ready for you to use and build on. Obviously, it's not week by week every single thing that you should teach in that particular unit, but it’s a skeleton to build on and certainly there’s a lot of references on where to go for further information if you need it. They're free, completely free, that’s what we've done because we don't want money from it we really just want these students to learn. You can access those from IP Australia's website.
We also have a trainer database, this a compliment I think to the kits, we've got over 3 hundred people who have signed up to actually deliver the units because we recognize a lot of RTOs and TAFEs might not have any specialist IP people on their faculty. If they did maybe, they'd be offering the units already. So the point is we have a whole list of experienced trainers all around Australia, a lot of them are lawyers, themselves or Patent attorneys, Trade Mark attorneys, who just want to do something extra and provide some training; and so again this is free, this trainer database so we can give it to you, you can have a look at all the people that are there, whether any of them are in your immediate area and would be willing to provide it, and so that's sort of up to you wether you decide to use one of your own people, existing staff members, or if you'd like to hire someone specific for training in IP. A lot of them are also business consultants, as well, who haven't necessarily, they’re not necessarily lawyers, but they’re experienced in business, and how IP applies to business and they have to have a certificate 4 in training and assessment.
We also have a few student work books, which accompany the units; the idea is to build on those as well and, hopefully, in a couple of years time we will have a full suite, but at the moment we’ve releases two of those workbooks. So, again they just provide more information, more exercises for student to look at.
Also, would encourage students to look at the IP Australia website which we are currently, actually redesigning and making it really, really user friendly, which it already is, but it's just being shuffled around, really rich source of information on Intellectual Property. Each of the specific IP rights, examples, case studies, fact sheets on different countries, for example; we've developed a whole suite, if for example, one of your students has a business that wants to start selling into the United States, you know, what are the things they should you think about, from an IP perspective.
So, there's a lot on there already, but in the next couple of months there will be a huge amount of resources on there as well.
So, finally, I suppose, what do you do? It's actually almost too easy. Start offering the units, basically; and we would just ask that you let us know that you're starting to offer and how it’s going, I suppose. So, if there is a problem we can help. If they're very popular you let us know so we get good feedback, if they're not so popular also let us know because we'd like to know what could make them more popular, what could help.
At the moment they are not offered on an online basis, it’s a face to face, because it is a fairly technical subject, so we think that it is really important to have someone there guiding them through the process.
That's about it, really.
Last Updated: 11/12/2012
