ED 49: May-June 2013

44
Ma r k E t in t E l l i gE n C E
coulD your buSineSS
be an IP goldmIne?
Leveraging on intellectual property
Property” is
the current buzzword
circulating in the business
community or appearing
“intellectual
in news articles in the
local media. “Intellectual Property” - that
sounds pretty abstract. What exactly is
it?
“Intellectual Property” or “IP” in short is
about protecting your brand, ideas and/
or innovation and this is accomplished
via protective rights like Patents,
Trademarks and Designs.
If you are a business owner, it is a good
idea to make IP part of your business
strategy. It could help you protect your
key intellectual assets, stop your direct
competition from using them and bring
you revenue through commercialisation
and even strategic alliances where e.g.
you provide the technical know-how
and your strategic partner provides the
funding. Significant global corporations
and even homegrown companies have
invested in their IP. They capitalise on
protective rights first to ensure returns
on investment put into research and
development (R&D) and second to help
turn their ideas and innovations into
profits, and create brand value.
Depending on the nature of your IP
assets, it can be protected by e.g.
patents, designs or trademarks, or
sometimes even by more than one of
these protective rights. The following
is an overview of the two primary
categories of protective rights: Patent
and Trademarks.
patents
This is a form of protective right that
is used to protect your inventions, the
technical realisation of your ideas. A
Patent is an exclusive right conferred by
a government for a maximum period of
20 years. It gives you, the patent owner,
May | Ju n 2013
En t r E p r E n E u r s’ Di g E s t
the legal right to exclude anyone else
from manufacturing, using or selling your
patent product or method. During this
period of exclusivity, you can monetize
your key assets through licensing or
collecting royalties whilst at the same
time, bar your competitors from copying
your ideas and diluting your market
share.
It is fundamentally important that your
ideas are kept fully confidential and not
divulged to anyone before you apply for
a Patent with the patents registry, as
Patents are granted only for something
new, meaning that it is not (yet) known
by others, the public. In order to ensure
that your idea is legally protected, a
patent application should be filed as
soon as possible since protection and
eventual grant is based on a “first-tofile
system”. To this extent, for example,
a local (Singapore) patent application
could first be filed. Further applications
in other industrial countries of interest
may then be filed within one year of
the local (Singapore) filing and these
further applications will then be treated,
regarding patentability, as if they would
have been filed on the date of the first
filing (i.e. the Singapore application).
trademarks
When a customer has had good
experience with your product or
service, you want them to repeat that
experience or tell others about it, and
it is your trademark that will facilitate
this. Valuable goodwill resides in
your trademark and it is critical that
you proactively protect it, by securing
registrations and enforcing them.
Many companies have numerous
trademarks but all businesses would
have at least one trademark which may
be the same as the business name.
Toyota Corporation uses their TOYOTA
house mark as well as many sub-marks
like ALTIS, VIOS, CAMRY, PICNIC, etc.
A trademark can be a symbol like Apple
Corporation’s titular apple or a slogan
like Nike’s “JUST DO IT”. Colours like
the green and yellow that identifies BP
petrol stations, a jingle like the short tune
that Hisamitsu used, or shape of the
product or packaging like the Toblerone
chocolate or the Nescafe bottle can be
considered trademarks as well.
A list of all the possible trademarks of
your company should be made and then
ask yourself the following questions:
a. Have we secured trademark
registrations for all of them?
b. Do the registrations cover all the
goods and services we offer or are
likely to offer in the near future?
c. Do we have adequate trademark
registrations in all the countries
where we trade or where our goods
or services may be distributed?
d. Are our trademarks being used
by our staff, advertising and
marketing personnel or agents,
distributors or licensees correctly?
For example, marks should always
be accompanied by the correct
marking (® where registered or
if not yet), and should not be used
in ways that may lead to the mark
becoming the name of the product/
service - OTIS lost exclusive rights
to the use of “ESCALATOR”
because of this. E
adam bogsch
viering, Jentschura & partner llp
M ravindran & angela leong
ravindran associates