eSignature Legality for Assignment of Intellectual Property in Australia

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Assignment of intellectual property in Australia

good afternoon everybody welcome to today's webinar on intellectual property today we're going to be doing a kind of 101 of IP help you will understand what intellectual property is how it applies and in the context of what we do here in our pastry how we can support you to make decisions about your IP and today I'm joined by Matt Lee welcome and hi Matt and myself I'm Casey we work in the stand up and small business engagement team and this is one of our activities that we undertake quite regularly to help Austrian businesses understand what IP they've got in their business and how they can make the most use of it all right today's session is definitely targeted at small businesses and those who are really new to IP and this probably won't be as helpful for anyone who's applied for an IP right but that's before who's an attorney but yeah let's go into it okay so IP Australia we are the federal government agency based predominantly in Canberra we have quite a number of offices around the country a lot of staff working around the country our role is to I suppose administer the IP right system in Australia so what that means is we take applications for patents trademarks designs and plant breeders rights we make an assessment on those applications to see if those applications make the test of the law that's applicable to them and if they do we grant an ownership over that particular IP right so when we talk about intellectual property we talk about it in various forms we say intellectual property intellectual property right we use patents trademarks designs and plant breeders rights I'm so mad talking about what IP really is at the heart for someone first up to this I suppose this is how we best describe what is IP and what is it what is it actually in someone's business okay so a lot of people will you know obviously you've heard people talk inside your property as a concept the way that we like to define it is that the application of the mind to create something new in the original however it can take many different forms and some that you wouldn't normally think about as well so for example a new invention brand design artistic creation but also other forms that you might encounter from day to day take for example the contact your phone that's valuable intellectual property certainly if a company were to get their hands on it it would be of great value to them as well and so you are surrounded all the time by various forms of intellectual property that you might not even think about - so any of those endeavors where somebody's got that intellectual idea and realize that in the real world in some shape or form and that is intellectual property so what we're seeing a lot of at the moment particularly with a bit of a tech startup thing happening across the country everyone's doing some kind of software as a service type of activity purchasing a lot of data based or ICT based technologies so um you know things that we probably as an office don't interact with us frequently but data lists as you said phone call this customer Diaries is really quite valuable to businesses these days it's the kind of competitive edge in their marketing sense absolutely and that also includes all of the know-how that you build up in your business as well whether it's just the methods and processes that you use on a daily basis within your business or other types of innovation that you create - again that could probably cusp be classified as in so much property okay so just to kind of demonstrate some of the intellectual property types that we deal with here at like easterly as Casey mentioned before we administer the registered intellectual property system so for all of these different types of intellectual property patents trademarks designs and plant breeders roads you have to apply to IP Australia before you actually granson that right and can start enforcing it this on the slide is a victor lawnmower and it's actually got all of these types wrapped up into this one product so to take you through them one by one first of all we start with pennants so we've developed a new net an original recess cutting disc this at the time was something that nobody had seen before and they were able to apply successfully for a pen on this particular piece of technology we're going to eat the details of the each of the types of in such a property and a little bit later on so as well as some of the requirements but suffice to say because they came up with this new invention that they were able to get pretty protection over that particular aspect of the lawnmower they also got protection over their brand via trademark so the victor lawnmower is protected as a trademark for that name as well it's the way that it's written there as a logo too so when we're talking about trademarks we're talking about protection for brands and the way that you market yourself and differentiate yourself from other competitors out there in the same marketplace - there's a register design on the victor lawnmower in particular for the shape of that engine so when we're looking at designs we're looking at the aesthetic look of a particular piece of property I guess so this particular apparatus for example has a unique smooth shape most of the time when you think about lawn mowers they'll have a blocky construction made with sharp angles and so if Victor actually invested the time and effort to create this particular unique looking lawn mower and because it has that unique appearance were able to get a register designed for the appearance of that engine block finally in keene we've also got the grass yes it's not exactly part of the lawn mower itself but it's the thing that it goes over and that's what is protected by plant breeders rights so in Australia if you come up with a new variety of plant species you can actually apply to IP Australia to get protection for that new variety of plant species as well so so walter turf is the grass that's in the picture here for you and again because that was a unique plant species they were able to get protection for that as something new so when we talk about registered rights and making an application we're talking about giving you an IP round giving you an ownership over these things so in the case of victor here and there are three IP rights on this particular lawnmower and in each of each of those IP rights has different time lengths that it's owned by victor and basically what that means is it allows me to just stop other people in the landscaping market copying what they're doing because if they do copy victor has a legal right to be able to stop them and that's i suppose the essence of what registered IP or IP more broadly is all about it's about taking ownership of what you've created and allowing you to stop others from copy what you're doing in kind of edging in on your competitive advantage not only that i guess the other thing there demonstrates is that often when you come up with a new idea and once it implement in some way such as a new lawnmower is that it's not just one type of instructor property that's going to apply to your product there's going to be a whole suite of options that you may have available to you and that you can get protection for so in this case again the new in technology underlying it was a pen the branding was a trademark the appearance was a design and again the grass if they were in that particular type of business would be a plant breeders rights too and this isn't the end of the story case if there is a no so there are also other types of IP and that you probably have heard about and more familiar about and these I suppose my favorite because they're relatively free or low cost to manage so the first one I want to talk about is copyright so copyright on the side that month presented earlier is talking about artistic creations a literary works and basically copyright is something that when you produce content say and you've written a story you have published content on your website you've taken a picture the moment that content becomes public law is published you have an inherent copyright from that time so there are so many small businesses around this country that are doing a lot of digital media for their business thing and using social media using their website to really promote their brand they have such value in their copyright assets in that sense and it's very important to consider okay how are you creating your copyright do people know it's your copyright and how are you treating it and managing it some of the examples that we use is simple things to alert people to that you that you own the copyright and something like a simple web statement on the bottom of your website might be a way to treat that um I like to use the example ash Newlin who is the inventor of the scrubber wash pack and ash has a wonderful way that on his website he looks at all the things that he puts out in the marketplace through various platforms and he says you can absolutely use my content but you have to ask and you must be using it in a way that I deem appropriate which is selling his product as a non seller or retailer so different ways you can think about copyright and use that as a way to manage your assets in your business now I know that copyright applies a lot to artists and people who work in the creative industry as well are they the people only who are going to be using copyright notice what we see too is obviously talking about that kind of about tech startups and our digital creators is computer code you know if you're out there in your developing code for a web-based product to software product as it would be that code if you create it ask this from scratch and you're creating it on your room are you are the copyright owner of that code and so it's not just visual elements that everyone can see at the surface level it does obviously go below the surface with that computer courage yeah and I think the treat is not just the same as authors the computer codes actually treated as a literary work so if you're somewhere you're writing a book or you're somebody you're writing computer code it's you can choose the language that's more suits you and that will also be protected by copyrights so the other unregistered IP right that I want to talk about is trade secrets and this is a suppose a low-cost management strategy that small businesses should consider when we talk about trade secrets I've got an example of coca-cola on the screen everyone knows coke everyone has obviously probably had a drink of coca-cola in their lifetime but many people don't know that it's actually a really good case study in how the company manages and treats their intellectual property one minute people don't know is that the recipe for Coke could have had been patented many years ago which would have given them a 20-year ownership over the recipe and the method for producing that recipe but in doing so they would have had to expose that recipe to the world coke why was he looked at their business model and where they wanted to be in the market at the time we thought no this is some pretty significant intellectual property this is the essence of what we're doing and we don't want that IP out in the marketplace so they have opposed the use of a trade secret strategy and they employ very strict confidentiality processes and contracts within their organization to protect that recipe so it doesn't get out unfortunately I think it was around 2006 timeframe there was a breach in that practice within the Coke enterprise where two employees tried to leave for the recipe and sell it to Pepsi and I suppose depicts his credit they obviously understand the value of intellectual property they actually alerted the coke officials and the matter was said obviously for an undisclosed sum so one can only assume that was quite a significant breach of the contracts that were in place to protect that secret so as a business it's also very important to think about this as a strategy you may have something that you think I care might pattern that or I might um I might look at how I can you know use that as my competitive advantage you need to think about what benefits are against the different ways that you can manage your IP and in some instances things like the data lists that we spoke about before using trade secret strategies within your business to keep that information within your business um might actually be a really great option particularly in your early stages when you're starting out and you're trying to happen see understand your commercial viability okay we just had a few questions come in so the first one was the name of the person who had the website copyright so the name of the person was Ashley Nuland so his product is called the scrubber bag which he developed a bit of a side hustle to his regular job as attorney so that's you can go and have a look up and the details of that product online you also got another question which is that if you work in the business or as a co then create copyright material that's published who owns the copyright the coder or the company that's a great question it's something that we've recently done a bit of work on that in your package yeah so my background is um I worked in the computing field as pen examiner for about seven years or so I'm here in IP Australia before moving in to work with Kacie Engagement Team in communications but so look at that is it's a bit of a complicated question simply because of it depends a lot on the relationship that you have with the company in the first place as well as the circumstances of how you created that code generally speaking to be a brief on this point is that if you happen to be working in an employment relationship and your code was developed as part of the employment relationship then the IP will be will sit with the company and they will be the owners of the copyrights in that code however by default in Australia if you don't have a written agreement which says otherwise if you are a contractor an independent contractor and you do work on behalf of a contracting honey that if you haven't gotten agreement which explicitly sets out ownership of the copyright then you as the contractor who actually own the copyright in that software code by default as well so again there's a lot of different factors which may kind of play into this but that has the simplest explanation I guess for those situations as well good question sir yeah great question all right let's um let's continue and move on to our next slide so why register and why not register man I mean this is the question we always get around about absolutely so the most obvious reason that you would want to get your items which are properly registered is from a protection standpoint you invested all the time effort and resources to develop a new idea take it to market you know and try and get some traction with it and the last thing that you want is for somebody to come along and take that away from you what for you to lose control over the thing that you've developed as well but there's plenty of other reasons why you might want to think about getting some protection onto you is that your property again via and registered rights or maybe even the unwritten rights to for example if you have some level of protection of you to that your property sometimes that can actually create more opportunities for you later than the track if you want to collaborate with somebody else to work together on the project and bring somebody into your business or company then you can more freely share your ideas by having that protection in place so that you don't need to worry about the worse situations where they decide to take your idea and run off with it themselves on top of that there are also other opportunities to create new revenue streams through things like licensing so if you have a piece of technology that another company might want to have a part of but they don't want to necessarily have ownership or control over it you can keep control as the owner of that intellectual property license it out to them and just receive royalties instead so all of a sudden you've turned a potential competitor into a partner and you I opened up you both also opened up that revenue stream in addition to but however just don't think about again the registered intellectual property rights there's also the other options of whether you want to release it into the public domain or open source and how other people use you federal property I know that recently the Tesla company Elon Musk has been a news you know fairly frequently has decided to release all the patents that they happen to have under Tesla electric car technology as well and so there are sometimes intellectual property strategies which involve doing other things rather than keeping your IP locked down and ultimately they'll be up to you in the kind of objectives kind of objectives that you want to achieve okay so the next thing we're gonna move on to is patents and I do want to just obviously let everyone know that some participating online today we will do our best jobs to give you as much information as we can on each of the IP rights we can't really go into the depth them so patents not this is your forte this is this is why you sit next to me in session so a patent as we mentioned before with the big the law no example deals with inventions and when we talk about inventions is actually a pretty broad definition most people think of inventions are somebody thinking around in the backyards in the shed somewhere you know we're smoke billowing out everywhere and that's true you can have physical products apparatuses or other types of things which I regardless inventions whoever inventors also cover methods and processes in Australia as well as substances so for people working in the chemical engineering fields for example pharmaceutical fields if you come up with the substance that in some circumstances can be regarded as a new invention so for those particular products and inventions what the patent does it'll give protection over the functional features of that product processes and again as I mentioned methods and processes which can be the underlying basis of business services as well the patent itself will give you a monopoly right so you as the owner have control over that panel in terms of who sells that manufacturers and otherwise exploiter and the term of that protection will last for 20 years for what we call a standard patent or eight years for an innovation pad now the difference between a standard pen and innovation panel is that generally speaking and innovation patent is easier to obtain as with a lower bar of entry compared to a standard pattern and in return we give you a shorter term of eight years protection if you want further protection then maybe in Staunton patent is the way to go instead it's important to note too that at this time a lot of our small businesses are really kind of discovering intellectual property for the first time asked me the question so 20 years around the world and I suppose know when we talk about patterns in the context of what we're talking about today we're talking about having a monopoly in Australia so IP Australia is only able to grant a patent within Australia if you would like to seek a patent in other jurisdictions such as maybe perhaps you'd like to export to the United States you would obviously need to seek that same protection in the United States and there are mechanisms that this office provides and some information website on how that might go about but a really good patent returning will be a special best guides for that with that activity yeah that's a great point and I guess that also leads into this particular question as to you know is parenting the right way to go and if you decide to go then this past thing or one of the costs going to be one of the things that we want to encourage here at like this charity isn't to say to everybody that yes you need to go out and get a patent so you know because that's the way to go because in a lot of circumstances that's not going to be the correct strategy one thing that you need to can see there again is one of the holistic costs that entering the pen system is going to be so filing the fees for filing for a patent application are on our website but you also need to consider whether you might need to seek legal advice or representation from a specific panettone for example if you get a penny attorney involved and that's also going to increase the cost that you're going to face in either the drafting of the application maybe even filing and prosecuting it live further down the track too once you have your pen also think about what you're going to do with it are you simply going to let us sit there maybe use it for those licensing or collaboration opportunities I mentioned before but if you actually have to enforce it what's that going to cost you to taking you through the cross system court system is costly exercise and something that you might need to be prepared for similarly if you also seek penance overseas that's also going to cost you money as well and the more countries that you apply for is go just going to multiply that cost out to one strategy that we've heard from some applicants for example is to just pick your markets and pick the markets which are most or them to you and focus your efforts in there so that you're not necessarily applying for protection unnecessarily in lots of smaller markets which I'm going to bother you too much as well so there's lots of factors at play but again we encourage you to you know going have a good think about what you want to do how you want to use your pen also think about the types of strategy that you want to employ for your business holistically and as well as seeking advice from professionals to give you the help that you need going forward so one of the products that our team develops just over 12 months ago now is the engaging and a toning toolkit so if you are inventing something you feel that it's like there's something in what you're doing that could be patentable I would strongly encourage you to be able to jump onto our website in our pattern section and look to the engaging an attorney toolkit this will be a really great resource to help ask you those questions of what you need to do and how you can prepare before you meet with a patent attorney so that when you walk into that office and you're having a meeting it's constructive it's valuable and you're prepared and Kenyatta's ask the right questions and really get value out of their time and they can also to understand if you're a client they're able to support more easily yeah and that one aspect of that particular tool kit was that that was developed in consultation we have the patent to any profession - so this is information that you know we've both agreed on it's like this charity and the pendant or any profession to say that this is useful to us potential applicants so you know it's not something that we were trying to go and say you know take away business from from the profession because they do have a really important role to play in providing you the help that you need but you know certain circumstances there are quite a lot of steps that you can take to prepare yourself for those interactions as well so definitely encourage you to check that out we do have a question which has come in which is saying that if you have a patent and there's another company which is copying the business idea do they just become consider there's a competitor in the market so if there is no pattern in place yes I think is that probably the basic answer no one I suppose has ownership over that intellectual property if we don't knows I'm able to ascertain if it could be protected by a patent or not but if it isn't protected then it's open for anyone to look at and use and implement in the way that may drive a commercial benefit in that business that's right and one of the rules of the pen system is that once something is out there and is publicly available then someone can subsequently come along at a later date and then apply for a patent themselves and lock it down we only give pens to inventions which are new and inventive that's where standard patent and so what we do is that we do have a look out there in the marketplace look around the world to say has somebody had this idea before and publicly disclose information about it because you're already out there in the marketplace this other competitor who comes along then can claim themselves and they were the inventor of this particular idea and then get a patent for it themselves because you have that publicly information available the other thing to think about though on the flip side is that it's another really important consideration that before you enter into business and go and launch your product is to do your search yourself and to see whether you have there is a patent on the same technology out there that you really want to avoid because if it's in force and affects your particular technology then the last thing that you want to do is to find out that you're the subject yourself of an infringement lawsuit later on again there's some tips in that engaging a patent attorney toolkit which will tell you how you can do some basic searches yourself and again that could help you to save some headaches down the track alright so talking about technologies or things that were not patented this is our favorite case study well favorite for unfortunately a bit of a sad reason so this is a Power Board which I think most people should have multiple devices of this type in their homes and something which was developed quite a while ago I think it was in the 70s and by a gentleman called Frank Bennigan's so he and his business partners we're trying to solve the problem which is a fairly simple problem if you think about it now of connecting multiple devices to a single power source and they went to a workshop and developed this particular product which is the power board that we see today however because they thought it was such a simple device they even made the decision not to get any patent protection for it and everybody knows the rest of the story is because that there wasn't any level of protection on it that's there were many other copies which have brought to market by rival companies to basically sell their own versions of the powerboard themselves if he if Frank if Frank and his team had gone and saw the patent for it then maybe it would be a different world that we live in today but the quote that you can see on the screen is is from him about the lost opportunity that he had because he didn't have that protection on there and again it's not necessarily about getting you know all the money flowing to you for a particular invention but it's just about having that control over the future of the product by being able to obtain the patent as well so he would have had some semblance of control isn't that where the technology was going and in this particular case he does have regrets which is a bit unfortunate about that lost opportunity for developing what is now ubiquitous mention as well so my kind of immortal stories is please please think about what it is you have and what could be the commercial viability even if it's a simple idea yeah this is a very simple idea isn't it and then please don't do a Frank why why you're just thinking about that I'm getting that information through to us where there's a largest question final question reasons coming through on pens and again keep your questions coming they're great I think it says systems saying there it's like how long will it take to obtain a patent for a stands and innovation pens so it'll take some time and it varies depending on the technology because we have you know different numbers of applications coming in for different types of technology and we assign them to specialists who work in that field of technology as well to assess but generally speaking it can take anywhere between a year two years or three years in the extreme cases as well I believe there's somewhere on the website which has the work fronts available to see but as a general statement probably on average would say probably two years and again that could be faster or slower depending on the particular workload that we have at the moment and it applies to both to innovation pants and standard pens innovation pens have a slightly different system because you don't actually have to get the through the examination process and to actually get the innovation pen in the first place it's only by the time that you want to enforce it such as taking somebody to court or using it to resolve a dispute that that's when you need to get examines as well again more details about the operation and the differences between both standard and innovation panels on their website so trademarks um for those of you who are activating a business who have a trading identity arrest was a brand in the marketplace train masters to trademarks is it comes every business um trademark and its fundamental is a sign used to distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another so basically all that is saying to us is I am company a match your company be company a is a sign that distinguishes my company and Company B is a sign that distinguishes Mac's company and you know our consumers in the market will know what goods and services they get from me and they'll know what goods and services they get from that and as we see each day we know that Coles and Woolworths are two companies that make this term this particular criteria unless you know what you expect when you walk into that store versus Kohl's when you walk into the Cole supermarket and the same with Aldi they each have a suppose the same goods and services but you know what it is what is their brand is just those so well known in the marketplace for their consumer base in Australia if you come to IPR and you select a trademark application you CC light projector brand if it is as far as accepted and it meets our examination processes we will give you a ten year registration on that trademark so you'll own that brand and you have to control that brand for ten years and the great thing about trademarks unlike patents is that you can renew that brand indefinitely so patents is a 20 year life cycle trademarks can go on as long as the company and the brand is active and and as long as the company wants to control that friend now see that there's a pointing that you have about the R symbol as well what's that all about so what we see a lot in the marketplace and a lot of people don't know is where you are with the circle it means that the brand is actually registered it has come to our Australian it has met the test of the my hat and it has been keeping a registration so if I haven't got a trademark and I still use the eye symbol I mean I've got a trademark which I reckon is pretty snazzy please do not omit is an offence to use the eye if you do have a registered trademark if it hasn't made its way through the application process however as you can see I've you a little TM in the circle the way that you can obviously you tell people that you wish to claim trademark protection under common law is to use a little TM in a circle and basically what's that stating to the market is I've established this branch I've established its identity and I'm claiming it as my trademark it hasn't either yet gone through the registration system or maybe it doesn't quite make the full test of the registration system so you can use a common law provision I mean over time ongoing use will build that value and that reputation and you it will become kind of valuable trainer however not registered so I can more freely use the TM symbol we are one sitting absolutely my snazzy trademark alrighty so when we talk about trademarks or talk about friends they are literally in our face every single day and you probably don't realize I mean you look at the two products that we've got on the screen here we've got Vegemite and they've got honor it's chocolate biscuits and both of these brands have multiple trademarks so we know that Vegemite is now owned by big ass so there's two trademarks in in the Vegemite brand arm it's is a trademark chocolate ripple here's a trademark and so there are many different ways that brands apply and sub brands apply and all of these can be protected by a trademark basically again what we're saying before is it allows us to stop others from copying so as we are no interest rate is the only one on its company and you will only see the top ripple made by the on its brand and there's many versions of I suppose a Vegemite esque substance but there is only one Vegemite and particularly if you're an Aussie I think that's a that's a given you mentioned that there's like there's only one islets now if I if let's say that my surname was honest as well and I wanted to go into business I didn't really wanted to anything to do with chocolate biscuits maybe I want to go into a completely different industry instead like fashion for exam is that gonna be alright it will be fine so what honors have a trademark over is their brand is protected in the food industry and the confectionery industry so they make a series of food products and they protect their brand in that marketplace they don't have any interesting fashion and it could and if you're a consumer and you're looking at an on its biscuit and an on its dress you wouldn't be confused that the source of those foods is the same person you like honor that's the on its fashion company and this is the aunts biscuits company are great so we will talk about how we classify trademarks I'm not too far from now although I'm not sure if I'm instead they were thought about the fashion industry because I know that my kid at the moment just like when she's eating her breakfast definitely likes to wear a Vegemite although for herself anyway so maybe something for them to consider so a business home in Australia is required you have to register a business thing if you want to conduct business and that's a regulatory requirement what a business name doesn't give you is any ownership over the use of that name in the marketplace and if you were to look on the business name registration our database it's made available from the ABR website you will see that you might find very similar business names to your business name so for example if I was KC's cakes I know there is cakes by KC I know there is KC and James cakes and there's similarities but none of us have ownership to be able to I supposed to stop others from using that name if it's just registered if I wanted to have ownership over that name and they wanted to stop others using that name in the marketplace I would need to seek a trademark protection because that's gives me a legal right to do so so on the screen what I've got for you is just kind of a bit of a summary of the differences so as we can see it in the Nestle example Nestle have a company and a business name as Nestle and Nestle group they also have a demain name as nestling comdataís you they have a trademark Nestle but they also have various other trademarks that are suppose in there the trading identity their product identity ad in the marketplace so trademarks extends beyond a business thing and can be a variety of different identities and brands within the company but it can also be the company name as well so if you are I suppose in thinking about your business name and you're thinking about your trademark identity or your brand exposure in the market some businesses do not have any of these aligned you could be ABC proprietary limited your business they might be jumping jacks and your trademark might be jumping jacks happy holidays and making stuff up as I'm going along here but there are different ways in which you can structure your business identity in order to be able to position yourself and your trademark strategy so I think um we have got a question around our trade things can you do it so the question or the comments just coming through is like we thought trade names are not legal because registered trademarks so I guess again the IQ is there you know what what is the difference of those of those trademarks can register trademarks compared to that that trade name as well um so I suppose it comes down to a legal ownership and a right to stop others a trademark is the only way that you will be able to stop others using your identity in the marketplace a business name I think they used the call trading names and was a regulatory requirement that the government asked and that was probably more to a line the corporate ownership of that entity for I suppose any taxation purposes and alike so it's certainly nothing to do in the IP space but there we want to demonstrate there's a very clear difference between the two and it's something many early-stage businesses don't understand and you don't want them to get in a pickle like that lady on the Shark Tank episode and again as Casey we mentioned in her example about Casey's case is that the trademark the protection given to you by a trademark cost of extends to those similar trademarks as well as anything that people might get confused about so it's not necessarily only going to protect you for those things which are an exact copy of your trading name if you have your trademark for we're trading name it will also cover any variants of it that people again might find similar by the time that they're shopping around and looking for you out there in the marketplace tell your story tale of two fat ducks so this is the kind of a classic I suppose David and Goliath story but it's also a really good example around the similarities description that Matt was showing you there so everyone knows Heston he's the the gentleman on the left but many people don't know is that Heston actually wasn't the first person in Australia to own the trademark Fat Duck and that was this lady over here on our right she created a cafe and I think it's a North Melbourne with her business partner and then did the Fat Duck cafe they registered their business name they searched on the Austrian trademark register to see if the Fat Duck was taken and owned by any other company and it wasn't I'm so they activated their business you know they did their due diligence I thought you know we're going to be a small-time cafe in the North Melbourne this is okay for us is we're happy we're comfortable going take a step forward and open soon so they've done they've done a good job unfortunately in this circumstance probably around a six-month period is overlapping these two instances heston off the back of his MasterChef Fame brought the Fat Duck from the UK to the Australian market and opened it at the crown leasing on Melbourne now because obviously has different has quite substantial financial resources behind him he obviously sought the IP lawyers to go out and make sure that he can obviously operate in Austrian market and to get all his registrations and business compliance underway in that process Heston has or Heston's Company has sought to secure the trademark for The Fat Duck and they had success and that mark was registered to our Heston's company what they are supposed to then did is they sent a series of cease and desist letters and to people who they felt were infringing on one Heston's registered IP answer this lady here on right she and her business partner received a letter saying please stop you're using my registered trademark and I need you to obviously not do that they also sent letters to the factor I think it's a pub in Sydney and the fact of pH a TSO phonetic equivalent and they also had to change their brand what we can tell from this kind of case study is that we taken lessons I do want to kind of really hash home that Heston actually using a bad guy it sounds like he is however he's just doing what every strain IP owner has the right to do and that is to stop others from copying or using their registered trademark and again I think it was one one point to note as well is that his team actually did a search of the trademark we just said the C before hands was there any business out there on the trademark register which other registered trademark for the Fat Duck and maybe it's the Casey you can hypothesize that if they had registered the Fat Duck trademark and had it on the register by the time the Heston did a search and said oh there is something on the register he might have instead gone and said alright somebody's got the trademark for you know the restaurant business in Australia I still really want to come to Australia how about how about I pay you to take over the ship or maybe just have a license for the factory mark it gives you the ascent the table to negotiate when you earn the IP what we can detect I suppose is a bit of a cost-benefit analysis on this is that this lady obviously had to change the branding and she lost goodwill oh there was uniform change over not to mention legal fees to seek advice about how she might navigate this situation you know we put a bit of a ballpark figure of at least ten thousand dollars possibly a lot more you know we don't run commercial businesses we wouldn't know the full cost that would be associated with that um and had she and her partner come through the system it would have cost them about five hundred dollars at the most and to secure the IP right for the Fat Duck trademark so you know sometimes it could probably act as an insurance policy and as matt said you know maybe give you a say and give you a seat at the table from that in that particular discussion now one thing or since are going to mention before we move on as well is that the ladies who ran at the cafe have some kind of rights under common law for or what what is otherwise known as a common law trademark so there is some recourse that they could have had to actually take on Heston and defend their territory but common law trademarks have a quite a few tricky oh those two / to establish the fact that you have a trademark or not such as saying have you got a built-up reputation than the like as well it's much simpler to simply go and get your trademark registered again for a previous morphine in the big picture of things and in that particular instance you know could have changed the whole situation patient as well so in the end they didn't go down that path after getting some advice about it and so the best thing that they could do is rather than have that the speed of testing is they just change the name of their brand which again has those costs involved okay now I do know that there are quite a few questions coming in like we will have seen those as well as the questions before about pens as well so I do promise that we will get to those questions and at the end of the session as well so what I want to do is I want to just exit our slide deck just for a moment Matt and I want to bring up websites and I'm just making sure that everyone can see that so I want to jump onto IP Australia cough don't you many of you probably have ready visit this site because you've come onto our site to get into this webinar so if you're a business and you're thinking about okay I've got a brand I think it's a pretty snazzy brand I don't want to lose to be using or where I want to check it about this I using it I just wanted to give you a few quick tips before whicker's and how you might do that unfortunately we do not have time to go into the depth a bit today because we've got a bit more coverage but I do want you to go into our search section here and what you will see on our website is that we will have obviously our upskill program will give you a little bit more of a step-by-step process we also have the Australian trademark search system so what you'll be able to do is type in some search terms into that system and check what else is on the register mat and I've been talking quite a lot of today about what in marketplace so what are these people doing and what are they requiring so you will just need to make sure that if you do find something with it's the same or very similar to your trademark have a look about what they are covered for and that will be in what we've called the classes or classification sections so you better see if its food its mechanics if it's software and make a bit of a decision about that we do have an up coming webinar on trademarks and we also have some content available on our previous webinar stage if you would like to take a little bit more time to get familiar with trademarks in the next day or two but I definitely recommend that you jump in to upskill it's a step-by-step process it's five short modules and most people that are going through this program are getting through the program within three to four days and they're coming out the other end there's a little bit more confident red mark all right we'll jump back to a slide deck no race the games we'll try and miss mindful at the time I was like we'll keep your questions coming with definitely if you stick around I get to answering those questions okay so design system going turning back to the little or no as I mentioned before looks at the visual aesthetic of a particular physical product so in that case they had a you know a smooth curved engine block for the lawnmower and when we're talking about designs we're talking about that particular type of thing we're not really talking about blueprints and schematics which some people kind of think about when they hear the word design instead instead it's really the kind of shape or pattern ornamentation of that product instead now yes you can imagine this is going to be very useful to certain industries such as the fashion industry but also to other types of industrial products that you might not consider such as simple things like toothbrushes and the shape of the toothbrush or even the pattern that you might find on a tire tread as well so anything with that unique aesthetic look is it is probably going to be eligible for a design protection again something to think about too is that if it's got some kind of functional aspect that might fall into the pen category instead which is looking at inventions but if it's really just there so that it looks at a certain way then the designers might be the way to go registration lasts for five years and then you can also renew it up to a maximum 10-year period too now one thing that's really important about the design system which is a bit unique to the design system in Australia is that you have to be careful about what information that you publish and release publicly about your design because we have a very strict rule that if you happen to exhibit your design or publish it somewhere that you can see it then you know actually prevent you from getting registration for the design later down the track and this if you happen to work in those industries or maybe you're a student who's you know wants to exhibit your design somewhere think about when you want to put in an application for you design before you go and release it publicly because unfortunately there's also no exceptions to this as well you can't come to us later and say oh I didn't know about or you know I really wants to just put in my application the next day if that design has been published unfortunately we draw a line in the sand and say sorry you can't apply for design protection on that thing that you've publicly demonstrated after that particular date again we do have a very in-depth webinar on designs and if you are a designer and you're working in a product development space we strongly encourage you to join us on that we do have a qualified design examiners who come in host that session and you can ask a lot of in-depth questions about designs and get really familiar with the process so that you're informed and worried about how you might approach that okay so one example that we have of this registan zone is to keep cut which again is an australian invention with such a big movement towards away from disposable plastics and dispersible materials you know kid cuffs were a great product which came into the market to say to coffee drinkers and other people who drink beverages here's a product that you can reuse multiple times but not only it does I have functional aspects and yes to keep cup company did actually go and apply for pants and for the innovations that they came up with in regards to this product but also spent some time to give it that unique look and feel and because they came up with that unique design about the way that the keep will keep cup looks they were also able to secure design protection for that as well and again you can see the quote from Abigail from Jacob abouts that aspect yeah they're their whole brand premise with Kate cup is about the functionality and the aesthetic and I suppose they can obviously protect their brand knowing with the trademark but that visual appearance if you see the cake up it is it's a keep up everyone knows that there's you just the essence of what they're trying to do and how they position their product as whole they've wrapped a really great boundary around that product with design rights trademarks and patterns to make sure that that unique aspect their competitive advantage what makes them popular is kept within their company yep and absolutely I think Francis has said this like like the packaging absolutely you can also that's part of your product and can apply to that function sorry to that aspect of your product as well the last slide we want to cover off and we are in the incident just a short minute on it is plant breeders rights and the reason that we don't go too far into plant breeders rights is that it's a very specific IP right and people who are in the horticultural industry generally speaking have access to qualified professionals to support applications but just briefly kind of like an invention if you come up with a new plant variety you're able to come to my ps3 and seek an ownership over that for 25 years it provides an exclusive right for you to grow sell and export that so you have control over that plant variety and you can make money through royalties or direct sales and it covers a variety of GM plants trees flowers fruit grape varieties as well so it's quite used I suppose in the wine industry as well alright everybody have a wonderful day and we will leave you with obviously a phone number our website and if you're on social media please be sure to connect and follow us some so that you've got the latest information from our office to help you make the best decisions with your IP