Legal
Issue No. 1 - July/August 2001
protecting your ideas
These are the most important questions facing people with new ideas and business success can depend on clear answers to them.
The main reason for protecting an idea is to prevent copying. By obtaining rights, the inventor or owner of an idea or author of a design or copyright work has an enforceable right to deal exclusively with the idea. Granted rights enable action to be taken against copycats, but also provide ownership rights that allow the control of ideas through licensing.
Ideas and inventions can be protected using one of the following means:
- patents
- registered trade marks
- registered designs
- copyright
- circuit layout rights
- plant breeders rights
The following article discusses the basics of patents and registered trade marks.
Patent
A granted patent gives the owner an exclusive right to the invention. It is granted by the Government and enables legal action to be taken to prevent copying and unauthorised sales which are infringements of those rights. The patent specification lodged with an application describes the invention and clearly defines the scope of protection given to it.
To be patentable, an idea must be inventive and new. The idea must not be obvious, such as a minor improvement that uses only ordinary trade knowledge.
The idea must be novel as of the application date. If the idea is shown in an earlier document, regardless of where it is published, it is not patentable. If the idea has been used in public in Australia before the application date, it is not patentable. ‘Used’ includes being sold, offered for sale or even importation to Australia. The most common incidence of this invalidation occurs when researchers keen to publish their work in scientific journals do so before lodging a patent application.
Disclosure of an idea should only occur when confidentiality is assured.
Before lodging an application, you should search relevant informat...
