Trademark laws Articles

With the internet expanding its tentacles far and wide to cater to a global audience, companies have begun deliberating upon how best to stop infringement of copyright on this new medium by adopting appropriate policies.

With the widening impact of the internet in our daily lives, the significance of trademarks has acquired a new dimension, particularly in relation to domain names. This is vital if you want to spread the word about your product or services among the consumers with the help of your domain name.

Intellectual property (IP) is a number of various types of legal monopolies over creations of the idea, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding areas of law. Under intellectual property law, owners have exclusive rights to several intangible assets like musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, breakthroughs, and inventions; and words. phrases, symbols, and designs. Trade secrets, copyrights, patents, and trademarks are four main types of intellectual property.

Unlike many other fields of law where the necessity of a lawyer is felt only after an issue has arisen, a patent lawyer is needed even before any issue arises. The most crucial responsibilities of a patent lawyer are to aid the customer in acquiring the patent, advising him on measures to ensure the security of the patent, and representing the case if infringement occurs.

Tangible assets like a shop, jewellery, currency, investments, vehicles etc are not the only kinds of property that one can possess and claim protection under the law. There are other kinds of property too which are provided for by law and safeguarded within the legal provisions and these are called intellectual property, which can be protected against infringement. Patents, trademarks and copyrights are the three main categories of intellectual property.

Industrial design is the practical application of both art and science to enhance a product in its functional and aesthetic aspects, in order to increase its market value. It can be used before a product is officially launched as well as later for improving upon the product.

Trademark protection is granted for terms, symbols and graphics that identify goods of one company as different from others. The main objective of trademarks is to prevent the customers from getting confused about the origin of an item that they intend to buy.

If you look at the books of large companies these days you will see that their intellectual property (IP) adds a huge amount to the balance sheet. In fact most companies fixed assets are small in comparison to the brand and IP value. This tells us something very interesting - yes - how much more would your business be worth if you invested more in intellectual property (IP) identification and registration?

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), being a statutory board under the Ministry of Law, is in charge of trademark registration in Singapore. Any applicant may either deal directly with the Registrar or hire a lawyer or any trademark agent as a go-between acting on his or her behalf.