CHAPTER 6
Ensuring the Value of Your IP Rights: Protection After Creation AS A TRADER AND CONSUMER,
you must always remember one simple thing: IP rights are affirmative, not defensive. Creation gives you ownership rights. Registration confirms your ownership rights. However, merely creating and registering IP will not prevent someone else from using, and even registering, similar or the same IP in global markets. This means that you must make the effort to assert the rights that you claim against others who infringe them, and in turn you are responsible for respecting the IP rights of others. If you fail to assert your rights, the infringer will not be stopped. Wherever civil, criminal, or customs sanctions are available, you must be ready to press them. The IP laws of a country may provide you a remedy, but it is you who must exercise affirmatively your right to the remedy.
Registering Your IP WHY REGISTER?
The reasons to register IP are numerous: ■
Registration of your IP is the least expensive means of establishing ownership and deterring infringement, provided you carefully develop and implement your IP strategy.
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A registration serves as a public notice to other traders that you have a claim of exclusive rights.
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In most countries, registration entitles you to use an actual notice of registration.
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If you intend to license or sell your ideas or works to other companies, an IP registration is likely to open the door more quickly because most companies refuse to look at unsolicited ideas and works.
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Perhaps most importantly, registration in compliance with a statutory system usually affords you remedies against infringers that are available only by statute and only for registered IP. In fact, in some countries, no remedies are available for infringing activities taken against unregistered IP. A note of caution, however. You should not just blindly whip about registering all of your IP wherever possible. There are two absolutely essential considerations that you must take into account. First, always make a careful cost evaluation a part of your IP strategy and continue to regularly revise the value of your IP in relationship to registration and enforcement costs. Second, always remember that registrations are in effect public records. While they will serve as public notice of your claim to exclusive rights, they will also make your rights visible to the public.
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