Trade-Related Aspects Of Intellectual Property Rights

Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an agreement produced by WTO to protect intellectual property from other WTO members. 150 countries are members of WTO as of 11th of January 2007 and that includes Australia and China. Therefore, when you take your business over to China, intellectual property right on the CATTS Coffee House should be protected. The areas covered by TRIPS agreement are: copyright, trademarks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents, layout-designs of integrated circuits and undisclosed information.

Copyright

Copyright protects things like computer programs, books, films and sound recordings. The CATTS Coffee House has a recipe book and DVD on how to make cakes and cookies called вЂ?Too easy, no worries. Even a cat can make it! вЂ" How to make yummy cakes and cookies’. The book can be interpreted in Chinese and DVD can be subtitled and sold there. Also the theme song for the CATTS Coffee House вЂ?Addicted to CATTS’ can be translated in Chinese and used. Book, DVD and theme song will be protected by copyright.

Trademarks

Brand names and logos can be registered as trademarks. Sam, you may have often seen signs like пÑ"' and пÑ"" but what are the difference between them? пÑ"' is used for registered trademarks and пÑ"" is used for trademark that is not yet registered. You may use пÑ"' overseas as long you show the country that the trademark is registered. However there is a protocol called Madrid Protocol which will make registering your trademark internationally easy for you. The Madrid Protocol covers Japan, the United Kingdom, European Union countries and China with single document, your trademark will be registered within these countries.

Industrial designs

Under this category, it refers to products like unique coffee cup design that you may have within your business store that can be registered as an industrial design. This may be like cups and mugs which have distinctively symbols or characters.

Undisclosed information

Trade secret like blenders of coffee beans, ingredients, and steaming time and so on are protected under undisclosed information. In other words, it basically involves ways of how you make your coffee that are different to others.

Other protections

There are more areas within the TRIPS agreement like geographical indications, patents, and layout-designs of integrated circuits however they are not relevant to your business.

Sam Swinburne, from what we have said so far about the TRIPS Agreement is that your business plans and products can be protected through the TRIPS Agreement. You also need to understand the TRIPS Agreement is that it has 3 main features that it must follow in order for it to work. These are Standards, Enforcement and Dispute Settlement.

The TRIPS Agreement reviews the minimum principles that each of the WTO members within the Agreement must follow to protect your intellectual property rights. Protection within the agreement means what is to be protected; the rights to allow exemption to those rights and the amount of time those subjects can be