Choose how to protect your intellectual property

Your brand, products, designs and creative work can be worth more than your physical assets. Some protection comes automatically. The rest you have to apply and pay for, and you get it only for what you register.

Start by listing what you have: names and logos, written and visual content, software, product shapes and patterns, and any technical invention. Then decide, for each one, whether automatic protection is enough or whether it is worth registering.

Compare the types of protection

When automatic protection is enough

Copyright protects original writing, artwork, photographs, music, film and software code from the moment you create them. You do not register it. Unregistered design rights protect the shape of a product, and for a short time its wider appearance, without registration.

Automatic rights only stop people copying your work. Someone who creates something similar independently does not infringe them, and if you have to enforce them you will need to show when you created the work and that it was copied. Keep dated drafts, sketches, files and code history so you can prove both.

When to register

Registration gives you an exclusive right that you can enforce without proving copying. It is usually worth it for:

• your business name, product names and logo, which you register as trade marks for the goods and services you sell
• a new technical invention with enough commercial value to justify the cost of a patent
• the look of a product that competitors could easily copy, which you register as a design

Search the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) records before you invest in a name, logo or invention, so you do not build on something someone else has already registered.

Keep an invention secret until you apply

A patent can be granted only for an invention that is new. Anything made public before you apply, by you or anyone else, anywhere in the world, counts against it, including a demonstration, a sale or a talk. Share details only under a confidentiality agreement until you have filed.

Patent applications are technical and the drafting decides how much you can protect. Many businesses use a registered patent attorney to search for earlier inventions and to draft the application.

Protect your rights abroad

UK rights protect you only in the UK. If you sell or manufacture abroad, you need rights in each country. You can apply for trade marks in many countries at once through the Madrid System, and start a patent application in many countries through the Patent Cooperation Treaty.