In Short
- Protect your educational brand by registering trade marks for key assets like your name and logo.
- Take legal action promptly if you suspect infringement to maintain the integrity of your brand.
- Regularly review your intellectual property to ensure it aligns with your business goals.
Tips for Businesses
Registering trade marks for your educational brand is essential to prevent unauthorised use. Act quickly if you detect infringement and regularly review your intellectual property strategy to ensure it supports your business objectives. A proactive approach can safeguard your brand’s reputation and value.
As the owner of an educational brand, you have spent time researching and producing educational materials. These materials are useful and helpful to your students. You have worked hard to develop a brand that attracts customers with quality teaching and practical tools for learning. It can be challenging to discover others taking advantage of your hard work. They may copy your educational materials and pass their brands off as your own. By protecting your intellectual property, you can prevent others from improperly benefiting from your work. This ensures that your customers know they are getting their educational services from your company.
This article will take you through the basics of two of the most valuable means of protecting your educational materials and your branding.
Copyright
Copyright gives you ownership of your creative property. It also protects the educational materials you produce and prevents other educational institutions from taking your work and selling it themselves. Additionally, it protects things like:
- textbooks;
- worksheets; and
- lectures and videos.
Benefits of Copyright
Benefits of copyright include:
- you have the exclusive right to use your copyrighted materials for economic gain. Other companies cannot take your worksheets or videos and profit from them;
- you have the exclusive right to change and adapt your copyrighted work, preventing others from using altered versions of your educational materials; and
- you do not need to register for a copyright. Copyright automatically exists from the creation of the creative work.
Copyright Protection Requirements
To have copyright protection, a creative work must be original. This does not mean it must come from an original idea; it just means that it must be creative and not be a copy.
Copyright Ownership
The author of a creative work is the owner of its copyright. If you are the creator of your advertisement, you are its author and own the copyright. If you have contracted another to create your advertisement, you may have to negotiate a contract with the creator that gives you copyright rights.
Non-Economic Copyrighted Work
You may have heard that the law allows others to use copyrighted works for educational purposes. However, the commercial use of copyrighted worksheets and other educational materials you create is prohibited. The law only allows students and other educators to use portions of copyrighted materials for research or study, not for commercial reasons. This means that, for customers to enjoy the full use of your educational materials, they will have to come to you.
Trade Marks
A trade mark is a form of intellectual property right that gives you brand ownership. Your trade mark will ensure that nobody else can use your branding to market their products or services. You can register a trade mark for things like:
- logos: other educational companies cannot use your logo to mislead consumers into believing they are accessing your products; and
- slogans: your school’s motto cannot be used by other schools, keeping your branding unique and specific to you.
Benefits of Trade Mark Protection
Benefits of trade mark protection include:
- excluding competitors from using your particular branding on their products. This means that when customers see your logo or hear your slogan, they know they are buying your products or services; and
- exclusivity allows you to protect your reputation as a quality business by preventing competitors from taking advantage of your good name.
Trade Mark Registration
To successfully apply for a trade mark, you must show that your mark is distinguishable from the marks of other businesses. To make your mark distinct enough for identification, you must ensure it stands out from others. A unique trademark will have a higher chance of acceptance and registration.
To register your trade mark, you must:
- be a resident of Australia or New Zealand. You can also apply for your trade mark through an agent in Australia or New Zealand;
- identify what you wish to register as a trademark in particular. To protect your logo, ensure you have an exact image of the logo you want to protect;
- apply through IP Australia. You can apply for a trade mark through the IP Australia website; and
- await your application’s outcome.
If your application is successful, you will own the trade mark for your brand and enjoy all of the benefits of owning that trade mark.
Trade Mark Protection
To ensure your trade mark remains protected for 10 years after registration, you must actively use it in your branding and maintain its uniqueness and distinctiveness from other brands. Additionally, you should enforce your rights against third parties using similar or identical marks. When considering changes to your branding, avoid making it too generic. If you introduce new trade marks, apply for separate trade mark registrations to safeguard them.
Continue reading this article below the formCopyright and Trade Mark Infringement
You may be unsure whether someone has infringed your intellectual property.
It can be stressful and frustrating to learn that someone else has copied your copyrighted work or is marketing their brand using your logo and branding.
Your business’ brand represents your values, identity and reputation. Learn how to create a successful brand and protect it.
Key Takeaways
Protecting your intellectual property will prevent others from copying the educational materials you create and passing their brand off as yours. The worksheets, textbooks, and lecture material you make will automatically be copyrighted so long as they are original. Obtaining a trademark will give you exclusive rights to your branding.
If you need help protecting your intellectual property or it has been infringed, our experienced intellectual property lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 1300 544 755 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Copyright gives you ownership of your creative work, preventing others from using or selling your educational materials, including textbooks, worksheets, and videos.
Registering a trade mark keeps your logos and slogans exclusive, preventing competitors from using your branding and protecting your reputation.
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