In todays class we learnt about intellectual property, what it is and how it affects us as designers and our work. This was just a light touch on intellectual property, and wasn’t too exhaustive.
Intellectual property is anything original that someone creates. These are the legal rights that belong to creativity, ideas, and concepts. Anything that belongs to someones intellect, and this protects people from getting their ideas stolen. As designers, we can create a brand identity, prototype, and working product without a lot of costs, expect time and ourselves. This means that we are of value and the way that we think is of value. This means that it is important that we are protected legally so that our ideas and thinking can’t be stolen. This was quite interesting as I never realised how important this is and how something original needs to be protected even if it isn’t a tangible thing yet.
There are a few different legal terms that are related to intellectual property that are important to understand. Copyright is content based, and we automatically own the copyright of our content if we have created it. A copyright dispute is usually won by the person who has done the design/work first. This is why it is important as designers to keep versions of files as well as having low-fi work such as sketches. Also iterations are important as this further proves that the work is yours. For me this adds another valuable reason to keep sketches and files as it can help protect me legally. Copyright is massive in the movie and music industry, and usually for 70 years the copyright is owned by the company who created it, but once those 70 years are up others can start using the characters or chords that were being used.
A patent is a legal document that gives an exclusive right for an invention and excludes others from using the patent. These are usually for a set period of time which goes up to 20 years. This is a very lengthly process and there can be a lot of back and forth between companies. Patents are usually more related to physical products and not digital products so it shouldn’t be something that we need to worry about too much.
Trademarks legally protect brands name, logo, phrases, and other multi-media elements that they may desire to own exclusively. This helps to distinguish companies from one another, to promote brands to be creative and not just straight up copy each other. A trademark takes about 3-4 months to be registered, unless it gets challenged. Different classes mean that items/products can have the same name, as long as they are not in the same class. Using gov.uk, you can look up trademarks for different classes, and I thought that this was quite cool that all this information is online and available to anyone.
An (Non-Disclosure Agreement), is a legal document in which 2 or more parties agree to keep information a secret, and not to disclose it. These documents are very serious and they must be stuck by. This includes even close family and friends, as if the leak comes back to you then it can be very serious trouble. I thought this is quite interesting as you can’t trust anyone in the business world and so it is important to use documents like an NDA to protect ideas and keep information confidential.
Todays class was very informative and helpful, as all this legal protection was something that I had no idea about. It was interesting to see how much behind the scenes work goes into design with all of the documents and legal work. What I learnt today will definitely be useful if I ever decide to go into freelancing, or decide to launch my own product or service.