How to use your IP to unlock Financial Opportunities

Event Information

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO), in partnership with the UK Business Angles Association, will be delivering a one hour webinar on Tuesday 8th December 11:00am - 12:00pm that will help business owners and advisers to use Intellectual Property to unlock financial opportunities and become investor ready.

What intellectual property is

Having the right type of intellectual property protection helps you to stop people stealing or copying:

• The names of your products or brands
  your inventions
• The design or look of your products
• The things you write, make or produce

Copyright, patents, designs and trade marks are all types of intellectual property protection. You get some types of protection automatically, others you have to apply for.

What counts as intellectual property

Intellectual property is something that you create using your mind - for example, a story, an invention, an artistic work or a symbol.

Owning intellectual property

You own intellectual property if you:

• Created it (and it meets the requirements for copyright, a patent or a design)
• Bought intellectual property rights from the creator or a previous owner
• Have a brand that could be a trade mark, for example, a well-known product name

Intellectual property can:

• Have more than one owner
• Belong to people or businesses
• Be sold or transferred

Intellectual property rights allow you to make money from the intellectual property you own.

Intellectual property if you’re self-employed

If you’re self-employed, you usually own the intellectual property even if your work was commissioned by someone else - unless your contract with them gives them the rights.

You usually will not own the intellectual property for something you created as part of your work while you were employed by someone else.

The IPO have also a new trademark online tool to help individuals and businesses improve their chances of successfully registering a trade mark. It is aimed at people who have not applied for a trade mark before, and have little or no knowledge of the application process it can be found by clicking here.