Intellectual Property

IP in the Fashion Industry

admin — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 12:37:54 +0000

Versace’s medusa motif, the Vera Wang wedding dress, Dr. Martens boots – all these are products of applied intellectual creativity and skill in the fashion industry. No one doubts the tremendous value of intellectual capital to the creation and marketing of products in the fashion industry, be it high fashion or ready-to-wear. Yet many small and medium-sized enterprises pay little attention, if any, to protecting such intellectual assets. In the current business environment, the primary source of competitive advantage for all businesses, including those in the fashion industry, is innovation and original creative expressions. Business managers need to identify such valuable intangible assets in a timely manner, determine their business relevance, and agree on those to be protected and leveraged through the intellectual property (IP) system. This article looks at the strategic management and use of IP rights to reduce risk, develop business partnerships, and enhance competitiveness of all types of businesses in the fashion industry.

Designs

At the heart of fashion are fresh, new designs. Among the range of IP tools, the protection of industrial designs – also simply referred to as designs – is the most clearly relevant to the fashion industry. Registration of a design helps the owner to prevent all others from exploiting its new or original ornamental or aesthetic aspects, which may relate to a threedimensional feature, such as the shape of a hat, or a two-dimensional feature, such as a textile print. The fashion industry invests huge sums to create new and original designs each season.

Despite this significant investment, little use is made of relevant national and/or regional design law to register and protect these designs. In some countries, fashion designs may be adequately protected by copyright law as works of applied art. However, a frequently cited explanation for not registering fashion designs is that the short product life cycle – often no more than one six-to-twelve month, season – does not justify the considerable time and financial cost involved. The arguments for registering a new design have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Registering a design should help to deter others from copying it, and to fight unscrupulous competitors who do so. Moreover, design protection is not always a major financial burden, at least to begin with. Some countries and regions, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), offer an unregistered form of protection for industrial designs for a relatively short period of time. Unregistered design protection, wherever available, is extremely useful for fashion designers or businesses with limited budgets, and for all those that wish to test market new designs before deciding which to register. The unregistered community design right of the EU offers protection for a maximum period of three years, starting from the date on which the design is first made available to the public in any of the 25 countries of the EU.

While fashion trends may come and go in the blink of an eye, some never pass. Many items become classical pieces. There is a one year waiting period at the French fashion house Hermès for the classic “Kelly” Bag, which grew to fame in 1956 after Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco appeared carrying the bag on the cover of LIFE Magazine. The classic Chanel suit – designed by Coco Chanel in the 1930s – is still sold today, for US$5,000 a suit. Many fashion houses strive to create such classic design pieces. When they succeed, if they have not obtained the appropriate IP protection in time, imitators will be able to ‘free ride’ on their creative work. For fashion items with a long life span, filing an application for a registered industrial design may be the best way to prevent others from using the design. It is possible to request at the time of filing – not after – that the publication of the application be deferred for up to 30 months. This is a particularly useful feature, offered under the Hague System, the EU community mark, and many national systems, for those who may want to keep their design secret until it comes to market.

(This is an excerpt from the article by WIPO titled IP in the Fashion Industry. A complete publication of this article can be downloaded under “Downloads”)

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Increasing the Marketing Value of Business with IP

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 16:02:11 +0000

Increasing the Marketing Value of Business with IP

The value of intellectual property (IP) is often not adequately appreciated and its potential for providing opportunities for future profit is widely underestimated by SMEs. However, when IP is legally protected and there is demand for the IP-protected products and/or services in the marketplace, IP can become a valuable business asset.

IP may generate an income for your SME through the licensing, sale, or commercialization of the IP-protected products or services that may significantly improve an enterprise’s market share or raise its profit margins.
IP rights can enhance the value or worth of your SME in the eyes of investors and financing institutions.
In the event of a sale, merger or acquisition, IP assets may significantly raise the value of your enterprise, and at times may be the primary or only true assets of value.

The strategic utilization of IP assets can, therefore, substantially enhance the competitiveness of your SME. SMEs should make sure that they are ready to face the challenge and take measures to exploit their IP and protect it wherever possible. Like physical assets, IP assets must be acquired and maintained, accounted for, valued, monitored closely, and managed carefully in order to extract their full value. But before this can be done, SMEs must first acknowledge the value of IP and begin to see it as a valuable business asset.

Technology, the greatest business tool for communication

“SMEs must first acknowledge the value of IP and begin to see it as a valuable business asset.”

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AS A BUSINESS ASSET

An enterprise’s assets may be broadly divided into two categories: physical assets – including buildings, machinery, financial assets and infrastructure – and intangible assets – ranging from human capital and know-how to ideas, brands, designs and other intangible fruits of a company’s creative and innovative capacity. Traditionally, physical assets have been responsible for the bulk of the value of a company, and were considered to be largely responsible for determining the competitiveness of an enterprise in the market place. In recent years, the situation has changed significantly. Increasingly, and largely as a result of the information technologies revolution and the growth of the service economy, companies are realizing that intangible assets are often becoming more valuable than their physical assets.

In short, large warehouses and factories are increasingly being replaced by powerful software and innovative ideas as the main source of income for a large and growing proportion of enterprises worldwide. And even in sectors where traditional production techniques remain dominant, continuous innovation and endless creativity are becoming the keys to greater competitiveness in fiercely competitive markets, be it domestic or international. Intangible assets are therefore taking center stage and SMEs should seek how to make best use of their intangible assets.

One crucial way of doing so is by legally protecting intangible assets and, where they meet the criteria for intellectual property protection, acquiring and maintaining IP rights. IP rights may be acquired in particular for the following categories of intangible assets:

Innovative products and processes (through patents and utility models);
Cultural, artistic and literary works including, in most countries, also for computer software and compilation of data (through copyright and related rights protection);
Creative designs, including textile designs (through industrial design rights);
Distinctive signs (mostly through protection of trademarks including collective and certification marks, but in some cases through geographical indications; see below);
Microchips (through protection of layout-designs or topographies of integrated circuits);
Denominations for goods of a given quality or reputation attributable to the geographical origin (through protection of geographical indication; and
Trade secrets (through protection of undisclosed information of commercial value).

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION AS AN INVESTMENT

Making the right investments is crucial for enhancing the market value of your SME. Investing in equipment, property, product development, marketing and research can strongly enhance your company’s financial situation by expanding its asset base and increasing future productivity. Acquiring intellectual property may have a similar effect. Markets will value your company on the basis of its assets, its current business operations and expectations of future profits. Expectations for future profit may be considerably affected by the acquisition of key patents. There are numerous examples of SMEs that have seen their market value increase overnight as a result of their acquisition of important patents in key technologies.

“Similarly, a good trademark with a good reputation among consumers may also enhance your company’s current value and may decisively contribute to making your company’s products and services more attractive to consumers. Investment in developing a good IP portfolio is, therefore, much more than a defensive act against potential competitors. It is a way of increasing your company’s market value and improving future profitability.”

E-Commerce has now become the new best thing in business

THE VALUE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ASSETS

A crucial point about legal protection of intellectual property is that it turns intangible assets into exclusive property rights, albeit for a limited period of time. It enables your SME to claim ownership over its intangible assets and exploit them to their maximum potential. In short, IP protection makes intangible assets “a bit more tangible” by turning them into valuable exclusive assets that can often be traded in the market place.

If the innovative ideas, creative designs and powerful brands of your SME are not legally protected by IP rights, then these may be freely and legally used by any other enterprise without limitation. However, when they are protected by IP rights, they acquire concrete value for your enterprise as they become property rights which cannot be commercialized or used without your authorization.

Remember that IP may assist your SME in almost every aspect of your business development and competitive strategy: from product development to product design, from service delivery to marketing, and from raising financial resources to exporting or expanding your business abroad through licensing or franchising.

So you will appreciate that Intellectual Property (IP) and business go together. In order to maintain business growth, you have to be creative, you have to make sure you are one step ahead of your rivals and IP helps you to do just that.

Business owners should start thinking to be creators of extra-ordinary products and services to remain competitive.

[This is an excerpt from the publication released by WIPO called IP For Business. To read the complete publication, please visit the Download menu to get a copy]

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The Role of IP in Promoting Economic Growth through Innovation

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 16:01:58 +0000

The Role of IP in Promoting Economic Growth through Innovation

It has never been more important to foster the creation and exploitation of intellectual property rights. They will play a vital role in helping the world through the current downturn

By Ronald Zink

In these difficult economic times, companies and governments increasingly are looking to information and communications technologies (ICT), green technologies and other innovative goods and services to keep their economies productive and competitive.

All of these industries, of course, rely on intellectual property protection – patents, copyrights, trademarks and similar rights –to fund research, generate returns on investment and continue the cycle of innovation and creativity. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 27th February speech trumpeted the importance of innovation and IP as a tonic for the economy: “[I]t is vital that our portfolio of early-stage, high-value businesses survive the downturn to secure our long-term future competitive advantage. [W]e must act so we do not lose the value which has been created in the ideas and intellectual property arising from the sustained investment in research over the past 10 years.” Just a day earlier, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry Shri Kamal Nath had mentioned the country’s 2005 Patents Act amendments in a list of steps taken to “give a fresh impetus to India’s trade and growth story”.It is therefore timely to review the many ways in which intellectual property and the innovation that IP supports promote economic growth and competitiveness. This article summarises a number of studies, statistics and industry developments of the past few years as to how IP promotes healthy economic activity, including benefits to the companies engaged in innovation, benefits to the wider economy, benefits to collaboration and benefits for public research.

[This is an excerpt from the publication released by WIPO called The Role of IP in Promoting Economic Growth through Innovation. To read the complete publication, please visit the Download menu to get a copy]

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IPOPNG’s World IP Day Statment, 26th April 2017

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 16:01:44 +0000

World Intellectual Property Day this year (i.e.2017) recognizes that innovation is an effective too that can be used by everyone to improve their lives.

“Improving Lives with Innovation”

Innovation is driven by the desire to improve. In PNG, Intellectual Property Office of Papua New Guinea provides the service to protect the IP assets that are being created by individuals as a result of their desire to make an improvement.

Papua New Guinea’s creativity needs to be harnessed through improved focus on creative thinking including research and development into the key government priority areas which are Agriculture, Health, Education, Renewable energy and Transport.

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