Intellectual property

K7 -The sector specific legal, regulatory and compliance frameworks within which they must work, including current Data Protection regulations.

Intellectual property (or IP) is something that belongs to you or a business that you've created or have the rights to. Intellectual property is protected by copyright law, enabling the creator or owner to gain recognition and commercial gain from the property and protecting it from other parties. IP can however be transferred or sold. Having the right type of intellectual property protection helps you to stop people stealing or copying your ideas and brand. Things that can be protected include:

The name of your products or brands (wilko, Tesco, Mr Muscle are all trademarked brand names)
Your inventions (stop people ripping off your idea or protecting your invention that was first to market, such as a Dyson bagless vacumm cleaner. )
The things you write or produce (such as a book, music and art)

Types of IP

Trademark

A trademark distinguishes the goods or services of one business or brand from another. All elements of your brand can be trademarked, eg: slogans, logos, shapes, colours and sounds. When you trademrk your brand you will be able take legal action against anyone who uses your brand without permission .

For example it would not be possible for someone to legally open an independent store called wilko and use the branding, or even sell similar products as the high street business.

However trademarks are registered within 'classes'. There are 45 classes listed within product or service categories. Therefore it is possible for others to register similar trademarks as long as it is in a different, unconnected class. Eg: Walkers crisps and Walkers shortbread, Apple computers and Apple record company.,

Even if you haven't trademarked your brand, you may win a legal challenge if you can prove you own that brand and have the goodwill with it.

Different parent companies may own the same brand for use in different regions. Eg: Henkel own the Persil brand and manufacture it in the German & US market. Whilst Unilever acquired the rights to manufacture & distribute Persil in UK & Asia.

A shopkeeper faced a legal challenge from Sainsburys after he named his store after himself, and used the supermarket chain's font & brand colours

Persil, availble in wilko is owned and distruibuted by Unilever in the UK, but the trademark is owned by HENKEL in other markets

Patents

A patent is used to protect an invention from copycat designs. It stops others from producing your invention under a different brand. In order to be granted a patent the work must be something that can be made & used. The design must be new and inventive. You can't patent artistic work (but it is copywrited). A patent should cover the product’s USP but is not so distinct that a competitor could enter the market with a slight variation. Patents must be applied for in every region you intend to enter. Patents in the UK last for 20 years so long as annual renewal fees are paid. If the patent is lapsed, third parties would be able to use the invention without fear of infringement.

Examples of items that are patented include: Dyson's bagless vacuum and Apple's iPhone.

Whether an invention is patented is often a key sticking point in negotiations on Dragon's Den.

Designs

You can register a design in order to protect the property and to stop people copying or stealing it. The look of your design includes the:

Appearance
Physical shape
Configuration (or how different parts of a design are arranged together)
Decoration

This is particularly useful in branding. Registering a design protects the product for up to 25 years. The difference between registering a design and a patent is:

"A patent protects the way something actually works rather than its appearance. Therefore, the protection afforded by a patent is broader than that provided by a registered design. However, patents are much harder and more expensive to obtain as your invention must meet stringent requirements of novelty and inventive step. In any event, a patent is not appropriate where protection is required only for the shape or the appearance of an article." source

wilko's Clever Pots range of hanging flower pots are a protected design

Copyright

Copyright law protects the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. There must be some skill, labour or creativity involved and it must be original material. Works covered by copyright include books, music, paintings, films and more!

In the UK, works are protected by law automatically unless released into the public domain. (This automatically happens 70 years after death of the holder) . Copyright holders can sell their rights or license third parties to use their IP and are paid royalties for this.

Examples include: radio/Spotify play artist's tracks and the record labels are paid royalties. Gift companies using football club badges/players on merchandise acquire a license from the club to use their image.

The manufacturer of these Man United products would acquire a licence from the club to use their brand (otherwise it's copyright infringement)

Copyrighted work is often used in advertising. For example a brand may use a well known song to advertise their product. (Tesco's 2020 Christmas TV campaign used a Britney Spears' hit)

To use copyrighted material in your work, you must obtain a licence by contacting the copyright holder. in Tesco's case, Britney's record label Jive records. There are some industry bodies that enable you to access licences.

PRS for music - license businesses for all kinds of music use, including making music available online, broadcasting it via radio and TV,
Getty/Shutterstock - Enables you to buy images for use in your editorial or creative work. The image creator is reimbursed for their work.
Creative Commons - An organisation that allows photographer's & creative's to share their work, enabling them to be paid. Many creative's share their work for free with attribution to gain exposure.
Pexels/Unsplash - are royalty free image sites. The copyright holder has allowed their images to be in the public domain and are royalty free, therefore you are not infringing copyright by using them.

Fair use policy

There are exceptions to copyright that allow limited use of copyrighted works without the permission of the copyright holder. Some examples include:

Educational purposes and private study - A teacher may use a copyrighted work to illustrate a point, photocopy pages from a book or record and play an educational film. Students may use copyrighted material in their work but should be attributed.
Parody and caricature - A comedian may use a line from a film or song for a comedy sketch. An illustrator may use the image of a famous person or character for caricature.
Accessibility - Making a copy of a lawfully obtained work in a format for people with a disability, such as producing a braille version of a book for blind people, or adding subtitles or audio description to a film.
Commentary and critique - A writer reviewing a copyrighted work may use quotes from the original material - such as lyrics from an album or a line from a film - to enhance their review.
News reporting - Using material* to report current events, such as artwork or music to report an artist's death. (*The exception is photographs which are purchased for newspapers & websites )

In most cases, the amount of material used can be no more than is necessary for the purpose. Source: UK Copyright service

Tesco used the Britney Spears hit Oops I did it again to great effect in their Christmas 2020 campaign

To use this image of the Queen in a newspaper or magazine I would buy a licence from Getty. The Photographer is then paid royalties for this.

GDPR

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in May 2018 and modernised the laws that protect the personal date of individuals. GDPR replaced previous data protection laws in Europe. Since then in the digital age, personal information is exchanged online on a daily basis - when customers go online shopping for example - and businesses now store customer's address, phone number, bank account information amongst other data.

GDPR harmonises data privacy laws across all EU member states (The UK is also included) and provides individuals with greater protection over their data and places limits on what organisations can do with that data.

Under the rules visitors must be notified of the data websites collect from them and explicitly give consent by clicking an agree button or similar. This is why all websites now carry large disclosure banners that their website collects cookies.

GDPR also calls for personally identifiable information to be anonymised.

In April 2018 wilko sent an Email to its 1 million* Email marketing subscribers asking if they wanted to keep on receiving our Emails. This was due to the GDPR laws coming into force the next month. Previously any customer that registered an account or completed a transaction on wilko.com were automatically enrolled onto the mailing list, following the change in law, customers must now give consent to be on the mailing list.

Following this Email send, approx 20% of openers clicked through and gave their consent for wilko to continue sending their marketing Emails. This meant the database was reduced to around 200,000.

Though it seems like wilko lost many potential customers, it meant that future marketing Emails were actually reaching engaged customers, meaning metrics such as open rate, click through rate and conversion actually saw an increase and soft/hard bounces decreased due to redundant Email addresses being removed.

wilko steadily grew their database over the coming months with marketing through other channels to capture customer's data. Customer's now opt in to our mailing list by ticking a clearly marked box (which is unticked by default) at the check out screen. As of April 2021, wilko has grown its database to over 2/3rds of the original figure, and many more of these subscribers now engage with our Emails.

wilko also segment their database to send only appropriate content to the relevant people. (eg: pet Emails to pet owners).

*I don't have the stats to hand for this as it was a while ago. Figures are approximate

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