General Information

Trade Marks

A trade mark is a recognisable brand indicator. You can rely on an unregistered trade mark or it can be registered. You can trade mark company names, product names, logos, smells, and sounds.

Read the ACID factsheet

Copyright

Copyright arises automatically (i.e., you don't have to register it) in the UK but requires registration in some territories such as China and the USA. Copyright applies to a number of aspects within your business, including images, text, design drawings, product packaging and website content, as well as surface decoration of certain products, sculptures and works of artistic craftsmanship.

Read the ACID factsheet

Design Rights in the UK

There are three types of design rights in the UK, each offering different levels of protection:

• Supplementary Unregistered Design Right: This lasts for 0-3 years and replaced the former EU unregistered design right that UK designers benefited from before Brexit. It covers all aspects of designs, including shape, materials, lines, ornamentation, texture, colour and contours.
• Unregistered Design Right: This lasts from 3 to 15 years and only protects the shape and configuration of a design.
• Registered Design Right: These last for up to 25 years requiring renewal every 5 years and cover all aspects of designs, including shape, materials, lines, ornamentation, texture, colour and contours.

The cost of registration and renewal in the UK can be found on the IPO website.

For more information, read the ACID factsheet on UK and EU Design Rights.

Patents

Patents provide protection for technical innovations within a product or process that is a novel step (an invention). You can only benefit from patent protection if you file for it prior to the product entering the market. Patents last for up to 20 years in the UK, providing they are regularly renewed. This varies in other jurisdictions.

Read the ACID factsheet

Trade Secrets

Trade secrets are your knowledge, skills, technical information and know-how, for example recipes and manufacturing processes. These last forever but must be kept confidential. In general, to qualify as a trade secret, the information must be: commercially valuable because it is secret and be known only to a limited group of persons.

New Product Design

If you are producing any new products and would like advice on how these could be protected please complete the following section.

Employment Contracts

Protecting Your Information

Artificial Intelligence

What Happens Next?

Please review your answers carefully before submitting the form. After submission, a member of the ACID team will contact you to discuss your IP Strategy Review.

Your answers to these questions will be referred to a Legal Affiliate and an online meeting via Zoom or Teams will be arranged to carry out the IPSR and make any recommendations. This will take no longer than 1 hour.

The ACID IPSR is a free benefit of ACID Corporate membership.

Don’t forget to sign the ACID IP Charter to further support our mission to protect intellectual property!