Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is a creative work or invention that the law treats as belonging to its creator or owner. It is not a physical object: if you buy a copy of a book, you own that copy, but the story printed inside it is still the intellectual property of the person who wrote it. The law gives the creator, or whoever the rights have been passed to, the say over how the work may be used.

Why the law protects it

Creating something new usually costs a lot of time and money before it earns anything. A writer might spend two years on a novel, and a business might pay a team for months to develop a product. If anyone could take the results of that effort and use them freely, the creator would lose the income that funds the work, and fewer people would be willing to take the risk in the first place.

Legal protection changes that. It gives the creator or owner:

• Control over who uses the work and how, so unwanted uses can be refused;
• A way to earn income, because anyone wanting to use the work can be asked to pay, or to agree conditions first;
• A reason to keep creating, because others cannot simply take the results of their effort.

The benefit is not only for the individual creator. When people know they will gain from their ideas, they are willing to invest in new ones, so protection encourages creation and invention across society as a whole.

A worked example

Imagine you and three friends spend two years and your savings creating a set of characters and stories for a new children's magazine. A large publisher could print the same characters, sell thousands of copies and pay you nothing, leaving you without the money to produce the next issue. Because the characters and stories are treated as your intellectual property, you can decide who is allowed to use them and charge a fee for that permission. That income lets you carry on creating, and it gives other designers the confidence to invest in their own ideas too.

Copyright is the legal right that protects original creative work, including software and its source code. The creator can decide how the work is used.

There is no registration process and no form to fill in. Copyright exists from the moment a piece of work is fixed in a form that can be copied, such as a file stored on a computer or a paragraph written in a document. Adding a copyright notice is optional; the right exists whether or not the notice is there.

Work, not ideas

Copyright protects the actual work you produced, not the idea behind it. Another person can make an independent piece with a similar purpose as long as they do not copy yours.

For example, imagine you build a small app that reminds you to water your houseplants. Your code, and the way you have written it, is protected. A developer who sees your app and then builds their own version from scratch, with different code, has not broken your copyright, even though both apps do a similar job.

Software

Patents are not the main protection for software; copyright is. This covers the program's source code, so nobody else is allowed to reuse your code without your permission.

A patent is a legal right that protects an invention: a new product or a new process, and the way it works. It gives the inventor control over how the invention is used, so they can benefit from the time and money they spent developing it. A patent protects the way an invention works, not simply how it looks.

Applying for a patent

A patent is not automatic: an inventor has to apply for it. The application describes the invention and how it works. A patent is granted only if the invention is new, so it must not have been made public before. If someone has already published the same idea, the application is refused.

What a patent stops

Once a patent is granted, other people cannot make, use or sell the invention without the inventor's permission. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 makes these actions illegal, so building or selling the invention without permission breaks the law.

For example, imagine you invent a plant pot with a sloping inner tray that collects water from condensation and feeds it back to the soil. The way the tray and channel work is the invention, so you apply for a patent. If it is granted, a garden company cannot manufacture or sell pots built that way unless you agree. A rival could still sell a plain pot, because the patent protects your working invention, not every plant pot.

Design protection is a legal right that covers the appearance of a product: its shape, the way it looks and any decoration on it. It protects how a product looks, not the idea behind it or how it works. For example, a company might sell a pencil case with a rocket-and-stars pattern printed on the front, and design protection can cover that pattern and the shape of the case.

Design protection stops other people from making or selling items that use the protected appearance without permission. If a rival printed the same rocket-and-stars pattern on its own pencil cases and sold them, that would break the law unless the owner had given permission. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 makes it unlawful to produce or sell items that use a protected design without permission.

Because the right covers appearance, a rival could still make a pencil case that works in a similar way, as long as it looks different. What matters is whether the two products look the same, not whether they do the same job.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is the UK law that protects intellectual property — creative work and inventions that the law treats as belonging to the person who made them. It does this through three separate protections: copyright, design protection and patents. Its purpose is to stop protected work being copied, used or sold without the owner's permission, so that creators stay in control of their work and can earn from it.

Actions the Act prohibits

• Copying protected work without permission — making a duplicate of all or part of it.
• Distributing or selling copies without permission. Copying and distributing work without permission is called piracy.
• Sharing protected work online without permission, such as posting a full copy of a paid-for digital magazine on a public forum where anyone can read it.
• Adapting the work without permission — rewriting it, altering it, or building a new version from it.
• Using protected work inside another work without permission, for example copying a long section of a book into a guide that you sell.
• Installing software on more computers than its licence allows. A licence usually covers a set number of machines, so adding it to extra machines breaks the agreement even though you paid for a copy.

Worked example: a shop buys one cross-stitch pattern from a designer, then prints that pattern onto 150 canvas bags to sell. Each bag carries a copy of the pattern, so the shop has copied the work and sold those copies as part of another product, all without permission. Paying for a single copy does not give the shop the right to do either of those things, so the designer can take legal action.

If you create something original, the law gives you rights over it. Anyone else who wants to copy, share, sell or adapt it needs your permission first, and a licence is how that permission is usually given.

The owner decides

The owner of protected work can use, copy, sell and adapt it, and can decide who else is allowed to do each of those things. That control is the point of protection: a creator can earn from their work, so they keep creating.

Owning a copy is not the same as owning the work. Buying a printed walking map from a visitor centre gives you that copy of the map only — the rights to it stay with the person who drew it.

Permission through a licence

Other people may use protected work only with the owner's permission, normally given as a licence: an agreement setting out what you may do with the work. A licence can be paid for or free, so never assume permission must cost money, and it often comes with conditions — that it covers one computer, for instance, or that the work is not resold. Keeping to those conditions is what makes your use legal; break one and you are using the work without permission.

For example, a designer sells a knitting pattern for a toy rabbit. The pattern's licence lets you knit rabbits and sell the finished toys, but not sell or give away the pattern itself. Someone who posts the pattern on a craft forum has gone beyond the licence; someone who knits and sells rabbits has not.

When protection runs out

Protection does not last for ever. Once the copyright in a work has run out, the work is no longer protected and anyone may use it freely.

Some owners do not want to deal with every request to use their work. They can publish a public licence: a permission statement that applies to everyone in advance, as long as the licence conditions are met. The work is still protected by copyright and the owner still owns it, but the licence tells people clearly what they are allowed to do with it. Anything the licence does not cover still needs the owner's separate permission.

Creative Commons is an example of a public licence. It is a set of standard licences rather than a single one, so a creator chooses the conditions. One licence might allow use only in non-commercial projects; another might allow changes to be made; another might require adapted versions to be shared in the same way. Because the conditions differ, you must check the exact licence before using a work.

For example, a board-game designer uploads printable paper tokens under a Creative Commons licence that lets anyone print and use them in their own games, but not sell them. A school games club prints a set for its Friday meetings, so it has met the condition and the permission applies. A shop prints the same tokens and sells them, so its use goes beyond the permission given and the shop cannot rely on that licence.

The important idea is that permission is offered to everyone, but it is conditional. If you fail to meet a condition, the public licence does not give you permission, and you would need to ask the owner separately.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives creators control over their work, but it was written for a world of physical objects. Making a copy of a physical object takes materials, tools and time, and the copy is rarely as good as the original. A digital file can be copied exactly, instantly and for almost nothing, so the creator loses control of it once a single person has a copy.

Perfect copies at almost no cost

A designer sells a knitting pattern as a download for £4. One buyer posts the file on a craft forum and hundreds of people download it. Every copy is as clear as the original, costs nothing to make and earned the designer nothing. Knitting the jumper from the pattern by hand takes yarn, hours and skill, and the result is never quite the same twice; sending the file takes a moment.

Sharing that crosses borders

The internet lets one person send a file to thousands of others in minutes. Uploads can be anonymous, hidden behind a made-up username, and the file may pass through servers in several countries, so it can be hard to know whose law applies and who to take action against. The pattern could appear on a craft site in the evening and be downloaded in five countries before morning, and the designer may never find out because there is no stock to count and no shop to check.

Lost income for creators

Many creators earn by selling copies, so free copies spreading online mean fewer sales and less money to spend on the next design. Small makers feel this most because they have fewer other ways to earn. Copying is still breaking the law when nothing is paid for it: sharing the file without permission is not made legal by the fact that no money changes hands.