The main types of intellectual property rights relevant to businesses in the UK are patents, trade marks, copyrights, database rights, design rights and trade secrets.
Patents provide the inventor the exclusive right to make, have made, sell, offer for sale, use and import an invention (and take legal action to prevent others from doing so). To be patentable, your invention must (i) be new (i.e., the invention has not been published by someone else before you); (ii) involve an inventive step (i.e., not be an obvious development to something already known); and (iii) be capable of use in industry. To obtain a UK patent, you must file an application with the UK Intellectual Property Office ("UKIPO") and prosecute the application in accordance with applicable requirements (e.g., payment of fees) until a patent is granted. This can be a lengthy process and can often take around 5 years. Once a patent has been granted, your patent will be protected for 20 years from the date you first made an application.
Trade marks identify you as the owner or provider of your goods and services. Trade mark rights provide the owner with a right to sue a third party that uses trade marks that are confusingly similar to the owner's trade marks. Trade marks include distinctive words, phrases, symbols, designs, logos, sounds and other indicators that are used to identify the source of products or services (e.g., Nike's "swoosh" and McDonald's "golden arches"). In the UK, trade marks can be unregistered or registered with the UKIPO. Unregistered trade mark rights arise automatically and can be enforced under the common law tort of "passing off". Registering a trade mark with the UKIPO provides the owner with certain advantages over relying on unregistered trade mark protection (e.g., registration provides the trade mark owner with nationwide protection over its marks and a presumption that those marks are valid, and acts as a deterrent to infringers). Trade mark rights generally run for as long as a trade mark serves the purpose of identifying the source of a product or service, but registered marks in the UK have a 10-year term (with unlimited additional 10-year renewal terms).
Copyrights provide authors the exclusive right to reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly display and publicly perform original works, and to prevent others from copying the same. In the UK, copyright arises automatically on the creation of the original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work or media content, including computer programs and certain databases. It does not need to be registered to be able to be enforced (unlike in the US). Copyright typically lasts for 70 years from the death of the author.
Database rights may exist independently of copyright in a database. Database rights protect the compilation and systematic arrangement of information comprising a database (e.g., mailing lists, directories and indexes), but not the data itself. Like copyright, database rights arise automatically on creation of the database, but last for a much shorter period – 15 years from creation or revision of the database.
Design rights protect the appearance of a product, such as its shape or pattern (e.g., glass bottles of Coca Cola). Design rights can be registered or unregistered with the UKIPO. Unregistered design rights arise automatically on creation. Design rights, unlike trade marks, have a limited lifespan. Unregistered design rights typically last for the shorter of 10 years from the end of the year in which they are first made available to the public, or 15 years from the date of design. Registered designs last for up to 25 years with renewal required every 5 years.
Trade secret rights are not strictly IP rights but are protected in the UK under the common law of confidence and a statutory regime. Trade secrets are a specific form of confidential information which (in broad terms) are (i) secret; (ii) commercially valuable because they are secret; and (iii) have been subject to reasonable steps to be kept secret (e.g., Coca-Cola's recipe and Google's search algorithm). Trade secret protection arises automatically and does not require the filing of an application with any governmental authority. Trade secret protection runs for as long as the applicable information remains secret.
Learn More: UK Founder Series: Protecting Your Ideas