Intellectual property

 

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT

"If you actually believe in free speech and not simply the free distribution of other people's intellectual property, you should let journalists, law firms, and investors exercise their rights to it alongside your own." - Glenn Kelman

COPYRIGHT

WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?

Copyright (or author's right) is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings. 

The copyright law aims to balance the interests of those who create content, with the public interest in having the widest possible access to that content. 

WHAT CAN BE PROTECTED USING COPYRIGHT?

Exhaustive lists of works covered by copyright are usually not to be found in legislation. Nonetheless, broadly speaking, works commonly protected by copyright throughout the world include:

• literary works such as novels, poems, plays, reference works, and newspaper articles;
• computer programs, databases;
• films, musical compositions, and choreography;
• artistic works such as paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture;
• architecture; and
• advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.

Copyright protection extends only to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation, or mathematical concepts as such. Copyright may or may not be available for a number of objects such as titles, slogans, or logos, depending on whether they contain sufficient authorship.

WHAT RIGHTS DOES COPYRIGHT GIVE ME? WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS AS AUTHOR OF A WORK?

There are two types of rights under copyright:

economic rights, which allow the rights owner to derive financial reward from the use of their works by others; and moral rights, which protect the non-economic interests of the author.

Most copyright laws state that the rights owner has the economic right to authorize or prevent certain uses in relation to a work or, in some cases, to receive remuneration for the use of their work (such as through collective management). The economic rights owner of a work can prohibit or authorize:

• its reproduction in various forms, such as printed publication or sound recording;
• its public performance, such as in a play or musical work;
• it's recording, for example, in the form of compact discs or DVDs;
• it's broadcasting, by radio, cable, or satellite;
• its translation into other languages; and
• its adaptation, such as a novel into a film screenplay.

Examples of widely recognized moral rights include the right to claim authorship of a work and the right to oppose changes to a work that could harm the creator's reputation.

TRADE SECRECY

WHAT IS TRADE SECRECY?

Trade secrets are intellectual property (IP) rights on confidential information which may be sold or licensed.

What qualifies as a trade secret?
In general, to qualify as a trade secret, the information must be:

• commercially valuable because it is secret, 

• be known only to a limited group of persons, and 

• be subject to reasonable steps taken by the rightful holder of the information to keep it secret, including the use of confidentiality agreements for business partners and employees.

The unauthorized acquisition, use or disclosure of such secret information in a manner contrary to honest commercial practices by others is regarded as an unfair practice and a violation of the trade secret protection.

WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION IS PROTECTED BY TRADE SECRECY?

In general, any confidential business information which provides an enterprise a competitive edge and is unknown to others may be protected as a trade secret.

TYPE OF TRADE SECRET

Trade secrets encompass both technical information, such as information concerning manufacturing processes, pharmaceutical test data, designs and drawings of computer programs, and commercial information, such as distribution methods, list of suppliers and clients, and advertising strategies.

A trade secret may be also made up of a combination of elements, each of which by itself is in the public domain, but where the combination, which is kept secret, provides a competitive advantage.

Other examples of information that may be protected by trade secrets include financial information, formulas and recipes and source codes.

WHAT KIND OF PROTECTION DOES A TRADE SECRECY OFFER?

Depending on the legal system, the legal protection of business secrets forms part of the general concept of protection against unfair competition or is based on specific provisions or case law on the protection of confidential information.

While a final determination of whether trade secret protection is violated or not depends on the circumstances of each individual case, in general, unfair practices in respect of secret information include industrial or commercial espionage, breach of contract and breach of confidence.

A trade secret owner, however, cannot stop others from using the same technical or commercial information, if they acquired or developed such information independently by themselves through their own R&D, reverse engineering, or marketing analysis, etc. Since trade secrets are not made public, unlike patents, they do not provide "defensive" protection, as being prior art. For example, if a specific process of producing Compound X has been protected by a trade secret, someone else can obtain a patent or a utility model on the same invention, if the inventor arrived at that invention independently.

HOW CAN A TRADE SECRET BE PROTECTED?

Companies should take preventive measures to protect trade secrets against theft or misappropriation, including:

• Non-disclosure agreement (NDA): employees and business partners should sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevents them from disclosing a company's confidential information.
• Non-compete agreement (NCA): employers should ask employees, contractors, and consultants to sign a non-compete agreement to prevent them from entering in competition when their employment/service agreement ends.
• Robust IT security infrastructure
• Controlling the accessibility of important documents

TRADEMARK AND DOMAIN

WHAT IS A TRADEMARK?

A trademark is a sign capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one enterprise from those of other enterprises. Trademarks are protected by intellectual property rights.

HOW CAN I PROTECT MY TRADEMARK?

At the national/regional level, trademark protection can be obtained through registration, by filing an application for registration with the national/regional trademark office and paying the required fees. At the international level, you have two options: either you can file a trademark application with the trademark office of each country in which you are seeking protection, or you can use WIPO's Madrid System.

WHAT RIGHTS DOES TRADEMARK REGISTRATION PROVIDE?

In principle, a trademark registration will confer an exclusive right to the use of the registered trademark. This implies that the trademark can be exclusively used by its owner, or licensed to another party for use in return for payment. Registration provides legal certainty and reinforces the position of the right holder, for example, in case of litigation.

HOW LONG DOES TRADEMARK PROTECTION LAST?

The term of trademark registration can, vary, but is usually ten years. It can be renewed indefinitely on payment of additional fees. Trademark rights are private rights and protection is enforced through court orders.

WHAT KIND OF TRADEMARK CAN BE REGISTERED?

A word or a combination of words, letters, and numerals can perfectly constitute a trademark. But trademarks also consist of drawings, symbols, three-dimensional features such as the shape and packaging of goods, non-visible signs such as sounds or fragrances, or color shades used as distinguishing features – the possibilities are almost limitless.

WHAT IS DOMAIN?

A domain name refers to your website address. This is what users type in a browser's search bar to directly access your website. A domain name is unique and cannot be shared between different sites. For example ovhcloud.com

Each website is identified by a unique set of numbers, called an IP address. Your computer uses these numbers to connect to the server where the website data is located. When visitors enter a domain name in their search bar, it sends a request to a set of Domain Name System (DNS) servers. The DNS then responds with the IP address of the website's hosting server, making it accessible. Domain names were created because IP addresses are too complicated

to remember. So, for internet users to access a website, it needs to be given a name. The structure of a domain name

To finish off this definition of a domain name, here is a quick explanation of its structure. Let's take the domain name of the OVHcloud website as an example: www.ovhcloud.com

• www: this refers to the third-level domain (World Wide Web).
• ovhcloud: refers to the second-level domain; this is the name of the site.
• .com: this is the top-level domain (TLD), also known as a domain name extension.

There are also sub-domains, such as our documentation website docs.ovh.com. The sub-domain here is "docs".

PATENT

WHAT IS A PATENT?

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application.

WHAT KIND OF PROTECTION DOES A PATENT OFFER?

In principle, the patent owner has the exclusive right to prevent or stop others from commercially exploiting the patented invention. In other words, patent protection means that the invention cannot be commercially made, used, distributed, imported or sold by others without the patent owner's consent.

IS A PATENT VALID IN EVERY COUNTRY?

Patents are territorial rights. In general, the exclusive rights are only applicable in the country or region in which a patent has been filed and granted, in accordance with the law of that country or region.

HOW LONG DOES A PATENT LAST?

The protection is granted for a limited period, generally 20 years from the filing date of the application.