Intellectual Property Rights

          For my assignment I doubt I will be able to capture my own footage and even if I am, I won't be able to rely on it solely. I will be using images and video that are owned by other people or companies that are, at the very least, copyrighted. It is important that I take note of it as my work could be, at the very least, removed and destroyed for infringing on IP rights.

Patents

Patents are used when dealing with processes and inventions used in industry, a patent ensures that they are not used without authorisation. The government grant the inventor the right to make, use or sell their idea within a government appointed nation or territory. A patent typical takes 2 - 3 years to be approved.

Design Rights

The creator of the design holds the rights to it, unless they were employed and created the work under instruction from the company. This would result in the design being owned by the company/employer that commissioned the work. A design is the colour, material, shape, texture, orientation etc. of a product. To be registered as a design, its appearance must be noticeably different to other products on the market. 

Trademark

Names, words, slogans, designs, symbols, icons or other unique features that is associated with a product or company are items that can be trademarked. Similar to patents, trademarks are registered by a government body nation or territory wide however unlike patents, trademarks take between 6 - 18 months to be approved. Trademarks within countries protect your IP within that country only, the EU have a Community Trade Mark that protect across all EU countries. The Madrid Systems allows submission of a trademark to be applied to multiple countries at the same time and will most likely be approved by the national patent office. Trademark is often shorted to TM and it is illegal to use it in association with your IP until the application has been approved. In the US, trademarks are applied for products whilst services have a service-mark instead however, SMs have the same protection as trademarks. 

Copyright

Copyrights are applied to recorded works such as dramatic works, musical, artistic, literary, films, sound recordings etc. Copyright gives the creator rights of use, protecting against unauthorised use of their work and grants them the right to take legal action against those who infringe or copy their work. Copyright is immediately to anything someone makes that meets the above criteria however, it must be registered to grant you verifiable evidence of ownership. 

- https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p15_design_rights

- https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/intellectual_property