Archive for the ‘Intellectual Property’ Category

YOUR DATA AT WORK

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Employer’s warned about demanding Facebook’s details.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warned employers this week that it would have “very serious concerns” if employers demanded Facebook login and password details from existing or would-be employees. Its concerns were made following news from the USA.  A spokesman for the ICO said: “The UK Data Protection Act clearly says that organisations shouldn’t hold excessive information about individuals, and it’s questionable why they would need that information in the first place…..We would have very serious concerns if this practice was to become the norm in the UK”.  Facebook said: “We don’t think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords because we don’t think it’s the right thing to do. While we do not have any immediate plans to take legal action against any specific employers, we look forward to engaging with policy matter safeguard the privacy of our users and other stakeholders, to help be.

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How to protect a domain

Friday, November 12th, 2010

We often get asked how to protect a domain name so that a third party cannot launch a similar domain name on the internet.

There is not a single registration system that allows you to make claim over a domain (and all of the various suffixes) however you can protect a domain name in the following ways;

(1) Trade Mark Application.
By filing a trade mark application for the distinctive element of the domain name (for example the distinctive element of www.lawdit.co.uk is the term lawdit) this will enable you to prevent third parties (in most circumstances) from using similar domains in relation to similar goods or services in the territory that your trade mark relates to.

However if a third party uses the domain in relation to dissimilar goods and services or in a different territory it will be much harder to acquire control of the domain.

(2) Purchasing Domains
The other option (which should really compliment 1 above and not replace it) is to purchase all the variations of domain names and suffixes to avoid others from doing so. This can of course be expensive but it is good practice to own all of the more popular domain names to avoid a conflict in the future.

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Original Copyright

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

One of the main aspects of copyright protection is to establish that the works (over which copyright protection is being claimed) is original.

So when is a work original?
In order for a work to be original the author must have exercised the requisite labour, skill and effort in creating that piece of work.

There is not however a definite term or measurement for the above. Instead much will depend on the facts of the case. The bar for originality will also be raised or lowered depending on the types of works in question. I will now deal with both ‘new works’ & ‘derivative works’.

New Works
Generally speaking a new work requires a low degree of labour, skill and effort. In the past the courts have ruled that a simple drawing of a hand or screw has copyright afforded to it.

Derivative Works
Derivative works are those works which are based upon pre-existing works.
In order for the works to be deemed original the following must be applicable:

The labour must be of the right kind : this means that some degree of individuality must have been exercised. A simple tracing of a pre-existing work (whilst labour some) is not original and therefore falls foul of this requirement.

The effort must bring about a material change in the works: this means that the author of the new works must impose on the pre-existing works some form of extra character and material change. The new works must be differentiated and distinct from the original works.

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Copyright – The Facts in Brief

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Copyright gives the author, designer or creator of a work the exclusive right to control the way his or her work is used or exploited. Copyright will automatically protect the work as soon as it is recorded, i.e. either in writing or in any other way.

Copyright can protect:

  • literary works, including novels, instruction manuals, computer programs, song lyrics and newspaper articles;
  • dramatic works, including dance or mime;
  • musical works;
  • artistic works, including paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures, collages, architecture, technical
  • drawings, diagrams, maps and logos;
  • layouts or typographical arrangements used to publish a work;
  • recordings of a work, including sound and film; and
  • broadcasts of a work.

The owner of a work protected by copyright can indicate this to others by placing the ‘©’ copyright symbol on their work, along with the name of the owner of the work and the date that the work was created.

Copyright owners have the exclusive right to carry out certain acts in relation to their work, such as copying the work, issuing copies of the work to the public, performing, showing or playing the work and making adaptations or translations of the work.

Copyright owners can also prevent others communicating a work to the public by electronic transmission and making available to the public a recording of a performance by electronic transmission, e.g. by putting it on a website.

A third party can only carry out the above acts with the copyright owner’s permission.

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