Q & A

Intellectual property rights are the intangible rights in the intellectual products. Intellectual property rights are basically composed of Industrial Property rights (Patents, Trademarks (™), Industrial Designs and Domain Names) and Copyright (©).

IP rights are assets that can be used to set your business apart from competitors and define your business grounds, you can sell your industrial property rights or license their use, you can also get investments based on your IP rights. These rights as well form an essential base and grounds for your branding and marketing policies.

Being protected by IP right Laws means that you have the required legal coverage against infringement of your products. You will be able to prevent competitors from using your invention, industrial design, trademark and Domain name. Investing in protecting your Intellectual Property increases their value and allows you to integrate them in your business activity and rest assured that you are covered against infringement of competitors.

There are three ways to protect intellectual property through the use patents, trademarks or copyrights. A patent applies to a specific product design; a trademark to a name, phrase or symbol; and a copyright to a written document.

For an invention to be “patentable”, it must be useful, novel and nonobvious. To find out if there are prior art disclosures or patents, we typically conduct a prior art search either in-house or through services that focus on such searching.

A patent protects new inventions and covers how things work, what they do, how they do it, what they are made of and how they are made 1. If a patent is granted, it may dissuade others from trying to use or exploit an invention and would give the owner the ability to take legal action to try to stop others from reproducing, using or deriving benefits from the invention without permission. An owner of a patent may sell or license their rights to the invention, thus transferring ownership or allowing others to use it under the terms of the license agreement.

Patents protect your breakthrough; it gives you the exclusive right to use your invention and market it for 20 years. Applying for a patent keeps you protected while you are studying the feasibility of investing in a business yourself, or even if you are negotiating with a multinational corporate to buy your invention. If you have several persons working on your invention, make sure to apply for a patent to get the legal coverage required for your breakthrough. You can also get investment in your projects based on being granted a patent. It is also an excellent basis to promote and market your inventions on basis of exclusive use (no competitors) and gaining the market trust as a sole owner of an invention.

A patent is granted by a national patent office or by a regional office that does the work for a number of countries, such as the European Patent Office and the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization. Under such regional systems, an applicant requests protection for the invention in one or more countries, and each country decides as to whether to offer patent protection within its borders. The WIPO-administered Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) provides for the filing of a single international patent application which has the same effect as national applications filed in the designated countries. An applicant seeking protection may file one application and request protection.

An invention must, in general, fulfill the following conditions to be protected by a patent. It must be of practical use; it must show an element of novelty, that is, some new characteristic which is not known in the body of existing knowledge in its technical field. This body of existing knowledge is called ” prior art”. The invention must show an inventive step which could not be deduced by a person with average knowledge of the technical field. Finally, its subject matter must be accepted as “patentable” under law. In many countries, scientific theories, mathematical methods, plant or animal varieties, discoveries of natural substances, commercial methods, or methods for medical treatment (as opposed to medical products) are generally not patentable.

in as many signatory states as needed.

A patent protects new and nonobvious inventions whereas trademarks protect branding associated with goods or services.

Intellection Property Rights (IPR) is an overarching term that includes various rights, design rights, performance rights, trademarks, patents and copyright. Copyright exists once an idea is written down or recorded and is an automatic right in UK law. It applies to any original written, dramatic, musical, artistic materials, or a film. Any material to which copyright applies is known as a copyright work.

Copyright normally resides with the creator unless re-assigned for example when a member of university staff or a student publishes and assigns copyright to a third party eg the publisher (for published works), or the university for the purposes of shared IP

Registering an industrial design requires your model to be novel (new) and useful (applicable) only, unlike the patent that has to prove being novel, inventive and industrially applicable. A patent protection in is longer (at least 20 years in most countries), since it should be proven to be non-obvious to the skilled in the art (inventive) to be granted, meanwhile the industrial design is easier to register (Since it has only to be novel and applicable), nut the term of protection is much shorter  (7 years only). For example an improvement of a car design to decrease the wind resistance and friction can be registered as an industrial design, on the other hand inventing a new drug or a new drug formula that is not obvious to the ordinary field professional is patentable (and even the new non-obvious use of an already existing substance is patentable in some countries – but not Egypt or the GCC).

A patent owner has the right to decide who may – or may not – use the patented invention for the period in which the invention is protected. The patent owner may give permission to, or license, other parties to use the invention on mutually agreed terms. The owner may also sell the right to the invention to someone else, who will then become the new owner of the patent. Once a patent expires, the protection ends, and an invention enters the public domain, that is, the owner no longer holds exclusive rights to the invention, which becomes available to commercial exploitation by others.

Patents are territorial. This means that registering a patent (or even being granted a patent) in a territory (Egypt for example) would not allow you the exclusive right to use your invention in other territory (GCC region for example). So, in order to be covered in one country you will have to nationally apply to each region or country in which you want to seek protection. But do not worry if you still didn’t make your mind up about the countries you in which may wish to be protected, you can apply for a PCT application, this will give you two whole years to make up your mind and decided on which countries you want to perform business (even through selling your patent to a domestic or international country) and seek protection there.

At present, no world patents or international patents exist.

In general, an application for a patent must be filed, and a patent shall be granted and enforced, in each country in which you seek patent protection for your invention, in accordance with the law of that country. In some regions, a regional patent office, for example, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), accepts regional patent applications, or grants patents, which have the same effect as applications filed, or patents granted, in the member States of that region.

Further, any resident or national of a Contracting State of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) may file an international application under the PCT. A single international patent application has the same effect as national applications filed in each designated Contracting State of the PCT. However, under the PCT system, in order to obtain patent protection in the designated States, a patent shall be granted by each designated State to the claimed invention contained in the international application. Further information concerning the PCT is available.

Procedural and substantive requirements for the grant of patents as well as the amount of fees required are different from one country/region to the other. It is therefore recommended that you consult a practicing lawyer who is specialized in intellectual property or the intellectual property offices of those countries in which you are interested to get protection. A list of URLs and a directory of national and regional intellectual property offices are available.

It is important to file a patent application before publicly disclosing the details of the invention. In general, any invention which is made public before an application is filed would be considered prior art (although the definition of the term “prior art” is not unified at the international level, in many countries, it consists of any information which has been made available to the public anywhere in the world by written or oral disclosure). In countries which apply the above definition of the term “prior art”, the applicant’s public disclosure of the invention prior to filing a patent application would prevent him/her from obtaining a valid patent for that invention, since such invention would not comply with the novelty requirement. Some countries, however, allow for a grace period, which provides a safeguard for applicants who disclosed their inventions before filing a patent application, and the novelty criteria may be interpreted differently depending on the applicable law.

If it is inevitable to disclose your invention to, for example, a potential investor or a business partner, before filing a patent application, such a disclosure should be accompanied by a confidentiality agreement.

Trademarks are different from all the other IP rights, as it is proven for the ownership of whom ever first uses them. Yet, registering the trademark keeps you protected from being imitated or taken advantage of. It allows you to ensure that you have a proven date of first use (or at least registering) in case you wanted to expand your business worldwide, or in case you have been facing unfair competition. Registering your trademark would prevent any potential competitor from registering the trademark and dragging you to a long and tiring litigation process to prove your legitimate right. Additionally, trademarks are assets that have a monetary value, and registering the mark would prevent any other companies from infringing your right, either consciously or unconsciously.

Before filing an application for a trademark registration, it is prudent for applicants to first conduct a trademark search to identify potential conflicts that might arise as a result of their adoption and use of a desired mark.

A trademark generally is a sign or symbol (but can be words, phrases or designs) that create an individual identity to separate the trademark from its competitors.

A trademark can be registered or unregistered. You can actually build up rights in a trademark under common law without it being registered this is known as passing off. However, it is easier to enforce a registered trademark which offers a lot more stringent safeguards.

The validity of a registered trademark depends on the jurisdiction/s the mark is registered in. Typically, most jurisdictions adopt a validity period of 10 consecutive years from the date of registration and the protection is therefore renewable every 10 years thereafter provided the mark was used in compliance with the appropriate trademark laws.

The trademark needs to be capable of being represented graphically, distinct and not descriptive, capable of distinguishing goods and services, registered in respect of goods and services and not excluded by statute.

A registered trade mark:

• may put people off using your trade mark without your permission
• makes it much easier for you to take legal action against anyone who uses your trade mark without your permission
• allows Trading Standards Officers or Police to bring criminal charges against counterfeiters if they use your trade mark
• is your property, which means you can sell it, franchise it or let other people have a license that allows them to use it.

A domain name is the internet link that reflects your business and brand on the world web, it is an important way of marketing your brand. Domain names are registered according to the rule first come first served; which means that domain names will be registered for whomever asks for their registration. Domain names are not field related as in trademarks. All these criteria of a domain name endanger your business.

Registering your trademark related domain names will give you the advantage of keeping the domain for future use in case you wanted to enhance your marketing strategies through using modern technology and will also prevent any competitors from registering your domain and  getting a free ride over your success through pretending to sell your product and confusing the consumer.

If your domain name is already taken in bad faith you can raise a case in the WIPO domain name dispute center. This a worldwide issue that is settled by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Many Domain names were settled there allowing the domain name back to the trademark owner.

Yet, in case your domain name was first registered in good faith anywhere else by someone who owns a similar trademark you may lose it and lose the competitive advantage of using it. So hurry up and have your trade mark registered as a domain name.

It is necessary to file applications in the MENA in respect of certain goods or services. All jurisdictions have adopted the Nice Classification with some having their own requirements as to what type of specification of goods or services will be permitted. For example, in Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, class 33 and alcoholic goods in class 32 cannot be registered. Also, pork meat in class 29 cannot be registered in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, in some countries, the applicant can file an application claiming the whole class without specifying the particular goods/services. The Trademark Offices do not object to the use of any of the class headings as being too indefinite or non-specific (such is the case in Egypt and the UAE, for example). Even more, in Saudi Arabia a claim other than a class heading or an item from a class heading will not be accepted. In other countries, such as Jordan and Sudan, the applicant must specify the goods/services in the class, otherwise the application will not be accepted. In other words, the actual language used in the specification of the goods/services in the registration will define the parameters of the scope of protection of a trademark registration.

Marking is not compulsory in the Middle East and North Africa. However, using any of those symbols on a trademark is advisable because it will give notice to the public about the owners’ rights.

In principal, the ™ symbol may be used when trademark rights are claimed in relation to a mark that has not been registered at the Trademark Office of a particular jurisdiction, meaning that, the use of the ™ symbol does not mean a legally enforceable trademark. The registration symbol ®, however, does carry legal weight. It should only be used when the mark is registered with the Trademark Office of a particular jurisdiction. Using the symbol ® illegitimately may be treated as fraudulent marking in most of the countries in our region.

When the trademark in question can be transliterated in different phonetic renditions, a vast scope of inconsistencies may come as a result of this. Careful thought and consideration must therefore be taken from the outset to select the most accurate and appropriate transliteration and to ensure that this version is consistently used.

Copyright protects written, theatrical, musical and artistic works as well as film, book layouts, sound recordings, and broadcasts. Copyright is an automatic right, which means you don’t have to apply for it1. The rights conferred allow the author / creator to prevent others from copying the work without permission. Copyright does not protect the ideas behind the work but rather how they are tangibly expressed, e.g. in writing. While there are no formal steps for registering your copyright, there are steps you can take to show when the work was created such as marking your work with the © symbol, your name and the year in which the work was created, lodging a copy with a solicitor or sending yourself a copy of the work via special delivery post to confirm the date and leaving it unopened.

A domain name is the internet link that reflects your business and brand on the world web, it is an important way of marketing your brand. Domain names are registered according to the rule first come first served; which means that domain names will be registered for whomever asks for their registration. Domain names are not field related as in trademarks. All these criteria of a domain name endanger your business.

Registering your trademark related domain names will give you the advantage of keeping the domain for future use in case you wanted to enhance your marketing strategies through using modern technology and will also prevent any competitors from registering your domain and  getting a free ride over your success through pretending to sell your product and confusing the consumer.

If your domain name is already taken in bad faith you can raise a case in the WIPO domain name dispute center. This a worldwide issue that is settled by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Many Domain names were settled there allowing the domain name back to the trademark owner.

Yet, in case your domain name was first registered in good faith anywhere else by someone who owns a similar trademark you may lose it and lose the competitive advantage of using it. So hurry up and have your trade mark registered as a domain name.

“The term of protection available [for patents] shall not end before the expiration of a period of twenty years counted from the filing date.” Consequently, in most patent laws nowadays, the term of patent is 20 years from the filing date of the application.

A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. … The conduct of a lawsuit is called litigation. The plaintiffs and defendants are called litigants and the attorneys representing them are called litigators. The term litigation may also refer to a Criminal procedure.

Preparation for Hearings or Trial. Ultimately, as your case progresses through litigation you and/or your attorney will be preparing your case for hearings or trial. … If you or your attorney are preparing for court hearings or trial, then this means that your case is in litigation.

If there is no settlement, the lawsuit typically can take anywhere between one to three years. Most are settled somewhere in that time, but some lawsuits go longer, and a few lawsuits go more quickly but usually not more quickly than a settlement.

There are three different types of trademarks that can be registered:

• A word or design mark. …
• A certification mark. …
• A distinguishing guise

A trademark offers legal protection for a symbol, logo, phrase, word, design, or name that represents goods or products. A service mark, or service mark, offers similar protection for services. If your company sells an item or multiple items, you’d need to trademark the mark used to represent the business.

The protection period is ten years as of the date of filing the trademark. Said period may be renewed at the end of the tenth year. It is worth mentioning that the renewal of the trademark for other periods shall also be published in the Trademarks Official Gazette.

And the government will not require you to get a trademark. However, if you do not have a registered trademark, the legal position is that you do not have good legal rights to your name or brand. You may not even own your name or your brand.