What are the types of intellectual property?

The principal types of intellectual property which we deal with on a daily basis are patent rights, trade mark rights, design rights and copyright.  There are, in addition, a wide variety of lesser utilised rights including circuit board topography rights, plant variety rights and others in specialist fields. 

Very briefly:

• If your work is essentially technical in character you may need to think about patent rights, potentially copyright and potentially also some rights in the design
• If your work is primarily of an aesthetic nature, you will be thinking about copyright and design rights, but be less likely to be interested in patent rights – although they all should be explored in any case
• If your endeavour is of a more generally commercial sort, you may nonetheless have any of these rights in your business and, as such, this is always worth having a conversation
• It is likely that if you commercialise any product you will want to explore the potential for the holding of trade mark rights in the name of that product for example

If you have any questions or would like to speak to an intellectual property specialist, please call Jonathan Perlmutter on 0330 818 2917 for a free consultation. Visit business intellectual property solicitors for more information.