IP Rights and their importance

IP rights and their importance in the creative industries

Intellectual property (IP) is something that you create from your imagination. For Web Developers, this could include a whole website, logos, branding, text content, and even the coding on the backend.

For an asset to be covered under IP rights, it must meet the requirements for a copyright, a patent, a design, or a trademark.

Suppose you are employed by a company and create things for them. In that case, your employer's company owns the copyright IP rights to these creations.

You can buy IP rights from its creator or a previous owner.

Copyright laws for Intellectual Property

The UK Government has a set of laws that protect your IP rights. These laws are called the Intellectual Property Act 2014.

The Intellectual Property Act 2014 covers the following:

• Copyright
• Patents
• Designs
• Trade Marks
• Unfair Competition
• Passing Off
• Database Rights
• Geographical Indications
• Integrated Circuits
• Trade Secrets
• Confidential Information
• Unregistered Community Designs
• Unregistered Community Trade Marks

Using somebody else's intellectual property

To use someone else's IP, you need permission to use it or buy the rights from them.

Using a design covered under IP rights without permission can lead to a fine or prison. Which is known as IP infringement.

On March 17th, 2018, Match Group, which owns Tinder and OkCupid, sued Bumble over copying features like the swiping feature on the Tinder app.

This was settled privately between the companies for an unknown figure. See more details from IP Watchdog

Covered in an NY Times article Match Group also sued a UK company Muzmatch, an online dating site, for a trademark infringement, for the use of 'match' in the name and using keywords "match" and "Tinder" in the website's metadata. Match claimed that this meant Muzmatch had benefited from Match Group's reputation.

Muzmatch lost the court case and was forced to rebrand, changing its name to Muzz. They were also fined an undisclosed amount.

Muzz also removed the swiping feature before this court case and the rebranding in light of Match Group's lawsuit against Bumble.

Why do IP rights in the creative industries matter?

IP rights allow you to generate money from your creations and protect you from others using your inventions, brand or product names, the design and look of your products, like your logo, and things you write.

This also protects others from using their products, so you must be careful when using other pieces of work. For example, if you buy a photograph, this doesn't mean you have automatic use of this photograph on your website. You need to make sure that you have a licence to use it, and if you have a licence to use this image for a particular use, you can't use it again for another use.

Many of the images I use are from Envato Elements. Envato Elements gives me a licence to use the photos in my work or personal projects. If I wish to reuse a picture, I must register it for different uses. There are clear guidelines that state I cannot resell downloaded items.

Does IP stifle creativity in the creative industries?

I agree with many IP rights, like the protection of your designs, logos, drawing, photographs, and written content created by you.

However, I feel that some companies or people take this privilege too far, for example. In a recent ongoing lawsuit, Lidl is suing Tesco over a similar logo design. Read more.