Vast amounts of intellectual property are bound up in databases and software used by businesses. This guide, covering patents, trade marks, copyright, designs, databases and confidential information, provides a useful management overview designed to help business managers and users protect their own intellectual property rights and ensure that they do not infringe the rights of others. Intellectual Property law has an ipact on almost every facet of commercial life. This guide is intended to highlight some of the most important aspects of the intellectual property rights available in the UK and how these impact upon business life. The guide is just that: a guide, focussing on those issues most often encountered by organisations operating in the business world. It is not intended to be comprehensive. This guide considers those recognised in the United Kingdom. IPRs range from patent rights, which may protect the active ingredient of a particular drug, to copyright, which may protect a software program or a piece of music. IPRs apply in the IT industry as in any other industry sector. However, commercial use of the web has brought all IPR concerns to greater prominence than before, by nature of the web's content-rich resource, the ease of digital copying and the potentially unlimited possibilities for speedy transfer of data world-wide. The "property" is intangible, but in common with any other item of property it can be exploited in a variety of different ways. Examples of this commercial exploitation might be the outright disposal of the property such as by way of an assignment in return for a payment, or the owner permitting others to exploit the property, whether exclusively or jointly under a licence. IPRs are essentially negative in substance. They give their owner a right to prevent others from doing certain acts. Some IPRs, such as patents and trade marks, are registrable, requiring compliance with some form of registration procedure, whereas others come into existence automatically when a piece of work is produced and require no formal procedure for their creation. Both copyright and design rights are non-registrable.

Table of Contents:
PREFACE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. PATENTS 3. TRADE MARKS 4. COPYRIGHT 5. REGISTERED DESIGNS 6. UNREGISTERED DESIGNS 7. DATABASE RIGHTS 8. CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION 9. SUMMARY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS