Thanks for joining. We've talked about why it is important to
protect your knowledge and research results in the previous video,
and now we cover how you can protect your knowledge and
research results through intellectual property rights,
particularly patents and copyrights.
IP stands for intellectual property.
A common element of IP-rights is that the owner gets
a limited monopoly that is restricted in time and types of use.
The IP-right grants its owner an exclusive right in order,
for instance, to sell,
use, copy, and publish a research result.
In exchange for acquiring exclusive right,
you as an owner have to disclose the research result you want to protect.
Other researchers, then have the opportunity to increase their knowledge and eventually
benefit from it by studying your disclosure once the results are made public.
This way, IP-rights stimulate innovation within society.
There are basically 8 IP-rights.
Patents and copyrights, we will discuss in more detail later on in this video.
Other IP-rights are plants variety rights, design rights,
trademarks, neighboring rights, database rights,
and chips and semi-conductors.
Each IP-right has its own set of requirements to obtain it,
and each has its own term.
For instance, you can apply for a design right if you come up with
a new 2D or 3D design such as a shape or form of a utility object,
like a chair or artificial hip.
This design right will give you protection for
25-years from the date of the first filing of the application.
Another example is database rights.
You can obtain a database right when you
create a methodically organized collection of data,
which is accessible and has required substantial investment to create.
So, no separate filing is necessary,
and a database right will be protected up to 15 years from the date of its creation.
So, what can IP-rights protect?
An IP-right can only protect elaborated ideas or ideas reduced to practice.
So, never ideas as such,
that are not in a tangible form like a concept,
and never creativity as such,
like a new style or fashion.
IP-rights can also not protect repetition of existing knowledge such as copies.
We will focus a little bit more on two types of IP-rights now: patents, and copyrights.
As mentioned in week one,
in the early days of knowledge exchange,
the primary focus was on patents.
The reason for this is that patents are highly
specific and offer easy to understand opportunities for companies,
granting them exclusivity of a tangible idea.
You can only apply for a patent if you come up
with an invention in a technical field which is novel,
that is inventive of existing technology,
and that has an industrial application,
like a new molecule or a new machine.
If it meets the requirements,
a patent is granted by a patent office which then grant the owner
20 years of protection from the date of first filing of the patent application.
The process for applying for a patent is long and can be technically challenging.
Patents are territorial, meaning they are valid in individual countries or certain areas.
They are generally granted by a national patent office or
a regional one like the European Patent Office.
If you seek protection in only one country,
you may want to apply for a national patent to a national patent office.
After your patent is examined by the national patent office and finally granted,
you acquire a patent that gives you exclusivity in that specific country only.
However, if you seek protection in multiple countries for instance,
under the Patent Cooperation Treaty,
you could apply for European patent at the European Patent Office.
If your patent is then examined and finally granted,
you do not acquire a single European patent as such.
Instead, you're asked to list the countries you
would like patent protection in and if granted,
you acquire a bundle of individual national patents
that follow from this one single European application.
Each of these individual national patents,
then has to be validated in its designated state.
These individual national patents may then differ in protection scope,
depending on the outcome of
the validation process and possible patent proceedings later on in each country.
An advantage of a European patent
over an application for a national patent at a national patent office,
is that there's just one single application procedure
for a scope of protection in many individual countries.
If you are looking for patent protection in many countries,
this could therefore be more efficient and economic than
applying for patents at multiple national patent offices.
Since 2013, you can also apply for a unitary patent at the European Patent Office.
Once granted, a unitary patent will grant protection for
the territory of the 25 member states that participate all at once,
so without you having to apply for separate national patents.
The advantage is, as with the European patent application,
one single application procedure for a scope of protection in a maximum of 25 states,
so even more efficient and economic.
However, if your unitary patent application has to be limited in one state,
the protection scope will also be limited for all of the other states.
Likely, if your unitary patent is declared invalid in one state,
it will be invalid in all states.
This is a disadvantage comparing
the unitary patent to the patent following the European patent application.
Another important IP-right we will focus on now is copyright.
You as an author,
obtain a copyright when you create a work with an individual character.
So, no separate filing is necessary.
Examples are a book,
a paper, or a scientific article you wrote.
Copyright also does not protect an idea but only an original expression.
The work needs to be original but does not have to be novel like in patent law.
To determine if a work is original or not,
you can ask yourself if the work reflects an original expression of the author.
As an additional test,
you could also ask yourself if it is reasonably possible that
two different people independently from each other will create almost identical works.
Keep in mind that copyrights are national rights,
and that especially the threshold of originality may differ per country.
If it meets the requirements,
a copyright is granted from the moment of creation and lasts up
to 70 years after death of the author.
So, now you know why it can be relevant to protect your knowledge with IP-rights,
which different IP-rights exist,
and how you can acquire them.
In the next video,
we will talk more about know-how and
confidentiality as a tool in protecting your knowledge. Thanks for watching.
Gert-Jan van OmmenProfessor of Human Genetics
