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The importance of IP for your business
Defend your rights
Defend your rights
Defend your rights!
Ownership of IP rights brings with it both enormous benefits and great responsibility. It is your responsibility to defend your rights and to make sure others are aware of them.
Don't wait for someone to infringe your IP. Put a strategy in place to deal with infringement before it happens, as part of your overall protection and commercialisation strategy.
If you find your IP is being copied or used by someone else without your permission, there are a number of actions you can take. These range from:
- a letter of warning from your solicitor;
- negotiations to settle out of court and, if this fails;
- court action.
Most disputes over rights are settled by negotiation. Litigation may be expensive, particularly if a settlement cannot be agreed and the matter is taken to court.
Whatever action you do take, pursue it vigorously and make sure any infringer knows you are serious about protecting your IP. Delay could also jeopardise your legal rights to obtain an injunction.
Don't let your trade mark become a household word!
One of the challenges faced in attempting to protect trade marks is to prevent the trade mark from being turned into an everyday or 'household' word, i.e. when people begin to use the brand name to identify the generic product.
I'm sure you can think of many brand names that are sometimes used as generic
terms (e.g. Kleenex™ instead of tissues, Hoover™ instead of vacuum
cleaner, RollerBlades™ instead of in-line skates).
The danger is that if a brand name becomes widely used as the generic name for a product, the company may lose the right to the exclusive use of the trade mark.
Be proactive!
Some trade mark attorneys in the United States place full page advertisements in various writers' magazines on behalf of their clients.
These ads warn against inappropriate use of their client's registered trade mark, spell out the correct usage and stress that any trade mark infringement will be defended rigorously. This is an excellent example of a proactive IP strategy.
Writers are a group of people likely to use a brand name instead of a generic name in their literary work, particularly when writing dialogue.
The media, of course, have great influence. If they begin to use a trade mark in place of a generic description, there is a real danger that this may encourage other people to do the same.
So the importance of using this particular preventative strategy, which targets a group of people identified as potential infringers of an IP right, is evident.
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