An overview of intellectual property protection (patent protection, trademark protection, design protection, and copyright).
Entrepreneurs, especially founders, often develop novelties of all kinds and thereby achieve a competitive advantage. This advantage must be preserved and it is essential to protect intellectual property properly.
In the field of intellectual property, a distinction is made between 4 areas. This differentiation is very important. Depending on which area an innovation falls into, it can or must be protected differently.
Patents protect technical inventions, i.e. solutions for a technical problem. One can patent individual products (e.g. a radio or a cold medicine) or a process (e.g. for the production of solar cells).
Trademarks are protected designations of a product or service. Protectable are combinations of letters or numbers (e.g. NZZ), whole words (e.g. Coca Cola), images (e.g. the logo of the Swiss Post), three-dimensional representations (e.g. the Mercedes star) and even slogans and advertising jingles.
Designs are protected creations of objects. They protect, for example, the appearance and shape of fabric samples, eyeglass frames, cars or packaging.
In the three areas mentioned above, protection does not arise until the product, process, trademark or design has been registered with the relevant office. The principle of first filing applies, i.e. the first person to file an application is also entitled to claim protection. If possible, keep your patent, trademark, etc. secret until the application is filed, so that no one can get ahead of you in terms of time.
Even before you invest a lot of money and time, you should carefully research whether a similar or identical patent, trademark, etc. is already being claimed by someone else in your field. It is extremely annoying to discover that a long and expensively developed design is already protected only after it has been registered. It is best to conduct an initial search free of charge at www.swissreg.ch.
Especially in the case of patents, registration can also have disadvantages. Often, competitors and copiers only learn about the new development through the patent application and also receive details about it. In this area, it is particularly worthwhile to seek detailed advice from experts in order to protect one’s latest developments in the best possible way.
Copyrights protect individual works of literature and art, e.g. a thriller, a piece of music or a picture. Also protected are works of a technical or scientific nature (e.g. construction drawings or a pictorial representation of an organizational model from business management) and also computer programs (software). The idea itself is not protected, but only the concrete work that expresses it (e.g. not the organizational model itself but the representation or not the software itself but the programming code as the work of the programmer).
In contrast to the first three areas, copyrights grant protection to the corresponding creator of the work even without special registration. Therefore, there is no register or similar, in which one would have to register. Anyone who creates a work is automatically protected by copyright.
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