There’s intellectual property behind almost every product and service we use in our everyday lives
Intellectual property rights (IPR) IPR play a crucial role in our daily lives. There isn’t a product that we encounter every day that has an IP protection. Your morning cup of coffee to the air-conditioning system at work or that selfie you take with friends are possible due to intellectual property.
Before going into the importance of IPR in our everyday lives, we should take a look at some of the important features of intellectual property rights. Creations – original and innovative ideas – can be considered a form of property. Since someone owns this property, it cannot be used by others without the owner’s consent. IPR includes protecting ideas such as an artist’s work, a movie, book, and a design. Patents, copyrights, designs, and trademarks are intellectual property.
Significance of Intellectual Property Rights
Let us go through the importance of IPR in different walks of our lives.
Art & culture
Moviemaking involves big teams, enormous budgets and undeterred effort. If someone decides to remake a movie in another language, borrowing ideas from the original with impunity, the actual creators could stand to lose revenues. Their hard work will also not gain its due returns. Similarly, if an author copies parts of his piece from another writer, the latter could lose income. This kind of ‘lifting’ or ‘stealing’ discourages people from revealing their creations. Copyright comes in handy in such situations. When artistes and creators are sure that their original work is protected through copyright, they can reap financial rewards. This protection encourages them to work better.
Industry & manufacturing
Something as simple as switching on a lightbulb has been made possible through a patent. Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan came up with the first lightbulbs and immediately patented it, which was a crucial factor for their business to develop. The significance of intellectual property rights lies in encouraging innovation and development of products and services that could make life simpler, while at the same time letting your business grow.
Industrial design
Design plays a vital role in almost every manufactured object we use regularly. A water bottle, your car, refrigerator, shoes, clothing; you name it, and the product is the result of dedicated thought, time, and money. A good product or service will not only look attractive but also ensure functionality. In the early days, car doors had a clunky handle that required some muscle to be operated. Today, car handles need the slightest of tugs; that’s called fine-tuning design.
Product identification
Often we come across marks, symbols, and writings that convey the purpose of the product. We identify products such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Adidas, Fevicol, Amul, and Britannia through their unique symbols that have become synonymous with our everyday lives. This trademarking is an integral part of patenting your product
We need to protect intellectual property, as IPRs are non-partisan, and are embraced by all sectors of industry ranging from labor organizations to trade associations.
