Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/116727
Intellectual Property Section 1 Know-How Know-How is not IP as such but can be just as valuable. What is Know-How? Know-How is technical information, knowledge and skill e.g. a procedure, a process, an identifiable knowledgeable way of doing something. That information must be secret. R&D projects and course-work can result in extremely valuable technical information being created. The only way you can really protect your valuable Know-How is through confidentiality. Confidentiality is considered in greater detail in Section 4 – Confidentiality. Copyright Have you ever written a thesis or article, written up an experiment, drawn a diagram or even recorded a presentation you have given on DVD? All can be protected by copyright. There is also copyright in music, broadcasts, sound recordings, computer software, photographs, films and typographical arrangements of published editions. Copyright does not generally protect against 3D reproduction of items from industrial drawings or plans (e.g. models created from blueprints). They are instead protected by design rights or as registered designs (see Designs section on page 11). Copyright protects the form in which you express your idea and not the idea itself. For instance, the copyright in the written words of a thesis may belong to one person but the patent over the invention described in the thesis may belong to someone else. Unlike a patent, there is no need to register copyright in the UK; it arises automatically. All that is required is mainly that the work must be original i.e. not copied from another source. There are different periods of duration for copyright, depending on the type of work. In respect of a written article, copyright would last for the life of the writer plus another 70 years. 8