Interesting questions from Intellectual Property

Effective intellectual property management involves the company’s ability to commercialize inventions, find markets for its brands, license its intellectual property, enter into cooperation agreements and other agreements covering intellectual property, and effectively monitor and enforce its intellectual property rights. For the purpose of commercialization, intellectual property rights may be sold (transfer of rights), a license for use may be granted, and they may also be used as collateral. You can read more here.

The holder of the intellectual property right, through the License Agreement, gives another person the right to use the intellectual property right, while retaining ownership over it. For example, with a trademark license, the licensee acquires the right to use the trademark for a certain period in a certain territory, but does not become its owner. The license may be exclusive or non-exclusive. In the case of an exclusive license, the licensee becomes the exclusive user of the intellectual property right, while the holder of the right has no right to further assign the intellectual property license to a third party. Very often, licensors will include specific restrictions on the licensee’s use of the IP in relation to certain: products, geographical areas or fields of use. Unlike a license, if eg. trademark is transferred, the person to whom the transfer of rights has been effected acquires all rights, including the right of disposal of the trademark, while the transferor loses all rights to it.

In order for the License Agreement to have legal effect towards third parties, it is necessary to obtain a Decision on entering the license in the Register of certain industrial property rights, by initiating proceedings before the Office. License registration procedure can be initiated by the right holder as well as the licensee from the contract.

For more information on licensing technology, see the electronic edition of the World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO, Secrets of Intellectual Property