Video Transcript
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hey there I’m Gary Schuster your friendly neighborhood inventor and this is innovation Cafe today we’re going to talk about the various kinds of intellectual property now what is intellectual property intellectual property put briefly is something that anyone can copy and copy without taking away your copy but for government laws preventing it so if I were to say take your shoes would you still have a pair of shoes no of course not I would have your shoes you would no longer have that pair of shoes now if you were to take a photograph of me please do I’m very very photogenic um but if you were to take a photograph of me you would still have your copy of the photograph even if I went and copied it and sent that copy to a thousand people a thousand people could have it and you would still have your copy so what do we take away from that we take away from that that
intellectual property is simply a set of laws designed to allow you to keep the benefits and the profits and whatever other rights that you think you should have and the government agrees with the things that came from your brain hence intellectual and property so let’s start with the first kind of intellectual property the one I’m most from familiar with which is patents now I did do a video I’ll link it Down Below on the three different types of patents and I’m going to hit them really quickly here there’s a Utility Patent now a Utility Patent is something that big surprise has utility a Utility Patent does something it has a function so an improved muffler for a car would be covered by a Utility Patent same thing with a bicycle say you improve the gear system that’s a utility patent kind of thing next kind of patent design patents now these protect the ornamental design of a thing so let’s go
back to the bicycle right now say I come up with a special little curly que thing that attaches to the uh uh steering to the handlebars of the bicycle and it has a lot of ornamental value but it doesn’t change the function of the bicycle at all I could file for a design patent on that there’s such a thing as plant patents uh which is exactly what it sounds like a patent on a plant um there are then trademarks right and what is a trademark well a trademark is designed to prevent consumers from becoming confused as to the origin of goods or services so trademarks are actually designed not to protect the company that is using the mark But to protect consumers from getting ripped off so if I go to the store and I see Norton Antivirus and Norton super duper antivirus and Norton super duper antivirus is made by a company other than Norton well that’s a violation of
the trademark I’ve been deceived as a consumer and you can bet Norton’s going to sue whoever is making Norton super duper antivirus so that’s how how trademarks work and are enforced to protect people the next one is copyrights now these things last well I’m not going to say forever but essentially forever anything that is Created from this point forward will never in my lifetime be free to use the copyright is never going to expire now another quick tip there is no copyright in Original US government works so if you’re searching for example on Google go to Google images and add at the end and you can see it right there site.gov and then double check that it’s actually a US Government site and it’s not a work on that site that the US government licensed but it’s a pretty good way to find free stuff all of the Hubble and James web telescope pictures are original US government works and you can use them for free so that’s copyright in a nutshell it’s have to be
careful about copyright ownership because if you hire someone to create a work unless it’s especially in the contract a work Made For Hire or they assign you the copyright so say I I hire someone to take take a photo of my family guess who owns a copyright not me the guy who paid for the photo but the photographer the guy that got paid to take the photo so there there are a lot of little glitches in copyright law where you you you think that a thing should be a certain way like when we pay for something we think we own it but not so with intellectual property you know it’s not a big deal if someone takes a family photo because they’re going to give you prints of it or a digital copy of it but be aware that you’re not going to own the copyright to it let’s look at Trade Secrets now this is kind of cool because the US government passed something called the defend Trade Secrets act and what did it do well it took Trade Secrets which had formerly been something that was dealt with separately in every state in the Union and created an overarching federal legal
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framework for it so now your trade secrets are protected on a federal level and a state level and in most countries what’s a trade secret well I did another short about that and I’ll link to it but it’s essentially something you keep secret no one else can steal it without getting sued but if someone develops it on their own then they’re okay um think about the formula for Coca-Cola as being sort of the archetypal trade secret so those are the main kinds of intellectual property that are out there the thing to remember about intellectual property is it’s entirely ephemeral if the government changes the rules of about intellectual property your rights to monetize that property might disappear intellectual property law is extremely territorial meaning the effect of the law stops at the shores of the United States so I could have a copyright in the US and a copyright in Canada and if I license the US copyright to someone it doesn’t mean that the copyright in
Canada has been licensed so that in is what you need to know about intellectual property law in the 30,000 ft overview coming to you live from The Innovation Cafe here in beautiful downtown Vancouver this has been your friendly neighborhood inventor Gary Schuster reminding you that a inventors operate on caffeine B your creativity is yours and yours alone and you are not obligated to give it up for anyone and see Everyone’s an inventor some people just press it under a blanket of negativity and self-doubt don’t do that you can create things all you want signing off from Innovation Cafe we’ll see you next time