Intellectual Property Theft
Obtaining Intellectual Property rights on the inventions have gained a lot of demand in India since the last few years as people have started to realise the importance of their time, money and efforts involved in the inventions they have been doing. It would feel absolutely disgusting and demotivating if somebody uses your invention for their benefit without your knowledge and take away all the credits. Intellectual property rights save your inventions from getting misused stops infringements completely. Patent Attorney in India grants patents and other rights to the applicant after carefully examining their applications and sometimes calling them for interviews as well. Once you have the rights on your invention, it is secured by the law and nobody can use it without your consent.
Intellectual Property Theft
As the name suggests, theft of Intellectual Property rights is called the IP theft where people or companies unlawfully rob the inventions, trade secrets, creations, designs, music, software etc (that come under Intellectual Property) of other companies or people thus giving them a major setback in their business in terms of trust and money. With the advancement in digital technology, this is growing as a major threat not only to the Indian markets but to the world as well. The internet file sharing has also become one of the major reasons of IP theft which is really worrisome for the business world. The increase in Intellectual Property theft cases are more in the countries or places where the law enforcement is lenient. The theft is costing million of rupees to Indian business every year and hampers the jobs and tax revenues to a great extent
What are the legal consequences of IP Theft
As discussed above, IP theft causes a huge setback to the businesses nationally and internationally both in terms of economy and performance. The legal formalities which the victim companies have to go through is a mental trauma itself as filing an infringement case and taking follow ups on a daily basis takes away all the time and the company is totally unable to concentrate on its productivity and gets rather busy with the legalities.
As far as the legal consequences are concerned, different countries have different laws that decide the punishment for the infringer and the damage control for the victim. The damage caused to the company might be financial and/or reputational hence the company has to prove the damage to the office of law to get the compensation. In order to be considered for the punitive or exemplary damages, the company has to prove the actual financial loss caused due to the theft. Also, since the substantial financial loss might be extremely difficult to prove in many cases, a reasonable royalty is given as compensation by the judge at an applicable royalty rate after carefully examining the application
What to do if you are the victim of an IP Theft
As soon as you find out that you are the victim of an IP theft and get to know that your IP rights are being misused by a person or a company, the first thing you can do is to ask them to stop. This actually works sometimes as the infringer gets to know that he might have to face legal issues as the company knows everything now. If you want to sue the offender totally depends upon the damage that has been done to you. Since Intellectual Property laws are very complex and vary from situations to businesses, you might not always want to invest your time, money and effort to sue the infringer if the damage is not worth your efforts.
Even if you are not planning to sue the offender, you must always take the legal advice on how to proceed further with the case. If the damage is big or you see it as a future threat, just gather all the relevant information like details of the infriginted work, type of infringement happened, proof of the financial losses if any and the action you want to take. Go to your lawyer for further proceedings
Characteristics of Intellectual Property
Intellectual property laws are made in every country in order to respect the morals of the authors. Intellectual Property Protection creates a sense of confidence and trust amongst the people who are either established businessmen or are thinking to start one. When it comes to the characteristics of Intellectual property, there are many which are noteworthy. Intangible properties, rights and duties, creation of statues and territoriality are some of the major characteristics of IP. Apart from that intellectual property must be assignable, must posses dynamism and must subject to public policy
Categories : Intellectual Property , PatentTags : Intellectual Property Protection , Intellectual Property Rights , Intellectual Property Theft Cases , Patent Attorney in India