Product and Business of the Metanet design and required IP rights for that

3D printing technology is one of the emerging technology in the sector of designing engineering. By the use of 3D printing technology, various types of prototypes can be constructed for the innovation purpose (Schubert, Van Langeveld and Donoso 2014). In this article 3D printing technology is used for the crating some innovative design of the water taps, soap foamers and a hand washing hardware for the underserved communities. After some research few new designs of this things have been invented. As this was newly invented designs, it was very much important to protect this designs from illegal use and copying and for this reason, appropriate Intellectual Property protection methods have been used.

To understand the present scenario more briefly, current business and products will be explored, and required IP for protecting the will be discussed. Following that, most appropriate IP rights will be discussed, and the eligibility of applying for them will be evaluated. Next, the application process for IP rights in Australia will be discussed. Further, some of the possible options for protecting the IP in the overseas will be evaluated.

In this case study, there is a start-up organization, Metanet designs which develop innovative designs for the underserved communities. The business has developed some innovative designs of the special water taps, soap foamers and hand washing hardware. For developing these innovative designs in this case, 3D printing technology has been used (Bently and Sherman 2014). After producing lots of prototypes, this newly designed prototypes has fulfilled the needs of the local community. Thus the main aim of the business is to build new innovating products for the local communities.

While this new types of innovating design are produced by the Metanet, this is raising another concern for them. The innovative designs of the products can be used by some other third parties illegally, and for that reason, the Metanet must take some actions to protect these designs. As per the expert’s recommendation, to protect these innovative designs properly, the Metanet is opting for the appropriate intellectual property rights. The Metanet can use two types of intellectual property rights for protecting their new innovative designs. These two IP rights are the Design Protection rights and Copyright Protection rights (Austrade.gov.au. 2018). In the Design Protection right of Australia, there is a statutory framework which is used for registration of unique designs. A typical design application can consist of a single design, multiple designs and a single design in relation with many others products. The registration for the designs is done in the design office of the Intellectual Property Australia. To file the design properly, the Metanet designs must fulfil some legislative requirements. In the copyright law of Australia, businesses are protected which create some new types of product for the market. Under the legislative framework of Australia this type of register materials is automatically protected from unauthorised copying. In the copyright protection, it does not requires any type of protection.

As discussed in the above section, the most appropriate intellectual property right for the Metanet designers is the Design protection.

Most appropriate IP rights for the Metanet designs and eligibility of applying

In Australia, there are no special criteria for applying for a Design protection intellectual property rights. Anyone in Australia is eligible for filing a design application. In this case, the main requirement is that the applicant must be entitled to be the owner of the design which is being registered. Also, the applicant has to provide a valid residential address where he or she can be contacted, and the email address and contact number of the applicant are required. To apply for design protection in Australia, the applicant also needs to fill an application form (Ipaustralia.gov.au. 2018). The applicant can use the eServices for filling out the form.

The eligibility criteria for applying for design protection also states it is not necessary that through one application only a single design can be protected in Australia. With a common single registered design, more than one products can be related to it. Vice versa more than one design is eligible for relating with it a single product. The single application which is submitted for the design protection must not consist of any other designs rather than the above mentioned ones. However, when an only one application is filed for more than a single design, all the designs must be having the official requirements before the registration.

To get the intellectual property rights in Australia, there is a specific process of application. In the following section, the application process for the getting IP rights will be evaluated step by step.

• First of all the applicant needs to fill an application form to apply for the IP rights. In this application form, there is a box for mentioning the number of designs which is going to be registered. This box should be filled with proper data clearly.
• In the next step the applicant needs to indicate the products in which the registered design can be applied or used. Also, the applicant needs to specify the name of each and every product for which the design can be used.
• In the further step, there are other criteria for these products to be registered with the design, that the products must be classified according to the Locarno Agreement (Business.gov.au. 2018). As per this agreement, the registered design will be visible on the database of designs according to the Locarno class. The main reason for including the designs in the Locarno class is that it makes the searching for similar designs very much easy.
• For the next step representation of the design is required. This designs can be represented as photographs, drawings and digital images. This representation must show the complete design. This designs must be shown on the white A4 quality paper, and one single sheet must hold only a single design, not more than one.
• The last step of this application process of the payment. An application fee needs to be given when the design application is filled. This fee can be paid by either using the e-services or by paper applications.

In certain cases, this process of the application fails due to various reasons. One of the main reason behind the unsuccessful application is the similarity issue. In most of the unsuccessful cases the design of the applicants identical with some previously registered designs. Also, in many cases, this designs found substantially similar with other designs which revealed in somewhere in the world.

 So, for this reason, the applicants can revise their designs as per the below two recommendations.

• New: The new design of the applicant must not be identical with any other designs which are revealed anywhere in the world.
• Distinctive:The design of the applicants should not be similar substantially (Drahos 2016) in overall impression that is revealed anywhere in the world.

The main option of protecting the intellectual property in the overseas country is registering the designs in other countries. In this type of situation, the timing is very much critical. If the applicant needs to protect the designs in the other country, then he or she needs to file another application for registering it globally. This application must be imposed within the time period of six months to register it globally otherwise the application will be a lapse and not be protected overseas.

Implementation of contractual security is another option to protect intellectual property in the overseas country (Parr 2018). The contractual security includes the non-disclosure agreements. This type of agreements ensures that sales contract, licences, employment agreement and the technology transfer to protect the intellectual properties onset.

When some other third parties or persons infringe with the existing intellectual properties, then some action must be taken by the original owner of the designer. These actions or the steps are discussed in the below section.

• Stop the Infringer: When a person or an organisation is infringing some IP rights, then the owner can directly seek to the court to take some legal actions against the infringer (Dratler Jr 2018). This process is known as the injunction.
• Seeking Compensation:After stopping the infringer, the main thing which needs to be done is the demand for the compensation (Depoorter 2013). Again by applying in the court the owner can demand compensation from the infringer.
• Future Preventions: After successfully stopping the current infringer it is very much essential to detect the other infringers of the same category. If the infringers are coming from the overseas country in Australia, then the Australian Customs can be informed about it, and they can stop the infringers to stop entering in Australia.

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that intellectual property rights are very much important for the protecting unique designs. In this paper, various types of unique and innovative designs of the water taps, soap foamers and innovate hand washing hardware has been developed. The main problem with the design was how to protect this designs from being copied by others. The one and only solution for this problem were protecting the designs with the IP rights. For this reason, the required IP rights for protecting the designs have been discussed in this paper. For applying  IP rights there are some eligibility criteria. This eligibility criterion has been evaluated perfectly in this discussion. Further, the application process also has been discussed. Lastly, some of the possible options for protecting the IP in the overseas country has been guided.

References:

Austrade.gov.au. (2018). Australian Intellectual Property laws – Austrade. [online] Available at: https://www.austrade.gov.au/International/Invest/Guide-to-investing/Running-a-business/Understanding-Australian-business-regulation/Australian-Intellectual-Property-laws

Bently, L. and Sherman, B., 2014. Intellectual property law. Oxford University Press, USA.

Business.gov.au. (2018). Intellectual Property. [online] Available at: https://www.business.gov.au/registrations/intellectual-property

Depoorter, B., 2013. Intellectual property infringements & 3d printing: Decentralized piracy. Hastings LJ, 65, p.1483.

Drahos, P., 2016. A philosophy of intellectual property. Routledge.

Dratler Jr, J., 2018. Licensing of intellectual property. Law Journal Press.

Ipaustralia.gov.au. (2018). IP Australia |. [online] Available at: https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/

Parr, R.L., 2018. Intellectual property: valuation, exploitation, and infringement damages. John Wiley & Sons.

Schubert, C., Van Langeveld, M.C. and Donoso, L.A., 2014. Innovations in 3D printing: a 3D overview from optics to organs. British Journal of Ophthalmology, 98(2), pp.159-161.