Nowadays, original ideas are often seen as currency. Innovative thinking can give your business a competitive edge and provide a huge opportunity for profit. But, if you have a great idea, your competitors may be tempted to use it too. This is why it’s important to learn how to protect your intellectual property. In this article, learn more about Canadian intellectual property rights, and how to use them to your advantage.

What is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual Property (IP) refers to things created in the mind, like inventions, art and literature, designs and symbols, and names and images used in business. The creator has rights to their intellectual property and may choose to protect these rights using intellectual property rights.

For example, if a recent painting appears in a book, the reproduced print is still protected by the painting’s rights. The work of art is intellectual property, not the original canvas and paint.

Learn more about intellectual property and your rights at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) website.

Canadian Intellectual Property Rights

Patents

Patents give you the exclusive ability to stop other people from producing, using, or selling your inventions. Inventions can include innovative processes, machines, chemical compositions, technology, products, and innovations made to existing inventions.

Your invention must be:

• New – The invention must be the first of its kind.
• Useful – The invention must solve a problem.
• Non-obvious – The invention can’t be obvious to a skilled person in the relevant field.

Here are some things you should know:

• The government protects your patent within Canada for up to 20 years.
• Your application is available to the public after 12 months of filing.
• Patents are only granted to the first applicant.
• Disclosing your invention to the public before applying will stop you from being able to obtain a patent.
• Details of filing a patent abroad may vary from Canadian intellectual property laws.

Check out the CIPO’s handout on Patents for more information.

Industrial Designs

An industrial design is the distinctive appearance of a product, including the shape, configuration, pattern, ornament, or combination of features applied to a finished work. Designs like bottle shapes or patterns can provide a competitive advantage because consumers can easily distinguish your product from others in the market.

Reasons to register your design:

1. Gives you proof of ownership.
2. Gives you the exclusive right to use the design in Canada for up to 15 years.
3. Protects your products against manufacture, sale, rent, or importation by others in the country.
4. Gives you a legally enforceable right to use your product’s design to gain a marketing advantage.
5. Protects the value of your design.

Here are some things you should know:

• Registering an industrial design gives you exclusive rights to stop others from using it across Canada.
• Once the design has been disclosed in Canada or elsewhere, you have one year to apply.
• You can also sell your rights or license others to make, use, and sell your design.

If you’re taking your products abroad, you can get industrial design protection in multiple countries with the Hague System.

Trademarks

Trademarks protect your original combination of:

• Letters
• Words
• Symbols
• Designs
• Tastes
• Textures 
• Moving images
• Modes of packaging
• Holograms
• Sounds
• Scents
• 3-dimensional shapes, and
• Colours

that characterize your business’ goods and services from others in the marketplace. This is essential because, over time, a trademark stands not only for your actual goods and services but also for your brand reputation. 

Your brand tells customers what they can expect from your products and services and sets you apart from competitors. Your brand represents what your business stands for, what you want your business to be, as well as how it’s perceived in the marketplace.

Here are some things you should know:

• This intellectual property law can stop other businesses from misusing your trademark.
• The Government of Canada protects trademarks for 10 years and can be renewed.

Copyrights

A copyright gives you the exclusive right to produce, reproduce, publish, or perform your work or a significant part of it, in any form. Your work must belong to one of these categories:

• Literary – Includes books, pamphlets, computer programs, and other works consisting of text.
• Dramatic – Includes motion picture films, plays, screenplays, and scripts.
• Musical – Includes musical compositions, with or without words.
• Artistic – Includes paintings, drawings, maps, photographs, sculptures, and plans.

Copyright also protects performances, sound recordings, and communication signals.

Here are some things you should know:

• Your original work is generally automatically protected by copyright as soon as it’s created.
• The Canadian Intellectual Property Office can issue you a certificate of ownership that can be used as evidence in court that you own it.
• Your copyright exists in Canada during your lifetime and for 70 years after your death.
• After that period, the work is generally in the public domain and can be used by anyone.

Trade Secrets

A trade secret is a piece of business information that is valuable because it’s secret and not known to the public or competitors. A trade secret could include a method, technique, process, research and analysis data, formula, recipe, device, instrument, and so on.

Why are they used?

• To make sure that an invention or design isn’t shared with the public before applying for a patent or industrial design.
• To protect an invention through means other than patent protection
• To protect valuable business information that’s not formally protected through other intellectual property rights.

Here are some things you should know:

• There is no formal registration process for this right so it lasts as long as it is kept secret.
• The Canadian government has no formal intellectual property process to protect trade secrets.
• Some ways to keep your information confidential are to use methods like non-disclosure or confidentiality agreements, confidentiality clauses, encryption, password protection, lock and key, and limiting how many individuals have access to the information.

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