While the patent and trade mark processes are well structured and clearly set out, protecting your other IP rights requires you to prove these ideas were definitely yours at a specific point in time. The World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) new online WIPO PROOF service may finally offer a more effective way to protect your copyright and designs.
WIPO PROOF is a new digital service that allows you to date and time-stamp any digital file so you can inexorably prove your ownership of this asset at a specific point in time.
It has been designed to provide innovators in any industry sector with a fast, effective, instantly accessible and, best of all, inexpensive way to safeguard a digital representation of their literary or artistic works, designs, trade secrets and data.
How does WIPO PROOF improve the current system for protecting copyright and unregistered designs?
Up until now if you needed to prove you owned copyright or design rights on a certain date, the best advice an attorney could give you was to print out or burn a copy of your words or a drawing or photo of your idea then seal it in an envelope with a signed statement from a credible witness and post it to yourself.
Then, as long as you gave the unopened envelope along with an official receipt showing the date of postage to your lawyer for safekeeping, you should be able to uphold your ownership of your copyright or design.
However, this has always been labour-intensive, expensive, and not entirely watertight.
Given the increasingly digital age in which we live, a more reliable and more user-friendly method has long been needed.
How could WIPO proof help you protect your copyright, designs, trade secrets and data?
WIPO describes the new WIPO PROOF service as being “very easy to use, making the service indispensable for any intellectual asset strategy”. We’d add that at just 20CHF for 5 years, it also seems extremely cost-effective.
However, if it’s going to be adopted it must also be easy to use. Thankfully this also looks to be the case as the system follows a simple 6-step process:
- You access your account
- You choose which assets you wish to establish proof of ownership of (in a digital format)
- The browser then generates a unique record of your asset
- You request a WIPO proof token
- Your asset is time stamped and the time and date are added to your token
- You can then download unalterable proof the digital token was created at that exact moment in time
Which intellectual property rights can WIPO PROOF be used to protect?
While copyright (the IP right used to protect art, music, lyrics, literature, software, and textile designs) and unregistered designs (the IP right used to protect the physical appearance of your products) are the most obvious applications, there are two more IP rights you could use WIPO PROOF to protect:
1. Trade secrets and know-how
This could include software algorithms, formulae, recipes, manufacturing processes or your client data or business plan, in fact any proprietary information that you can leverage economic value from.
2. Data
Even though the end result of your R&D could well be a new patent application, the data behind your innovation may be valuable in its own right.
Two IP advise on the protection of every type of IP right including copyright and designs as well as patents and trade marks and we are committed to finding a better way of working including finding solutions like WIPO PROOF. To find out how we could help protect and grow your IP portfolio, please email us today.
