In this class, we learnt about IP, Intellectual Property, one of the most legal aspects that applies to my designing career.
Intellectual property refers to the legal protections given to a creative to protect their ideas.
Anything original that someone creates is their intellectual property, and can be protected legally. This could be a song, novel, picture, product etc. If something is your intellectual property, you have the right to use, alter and profit from it. You can also licence your intellectual property to others at your own discretion.
Work for Hire: As an employee, anything you create while employed at a company will belong to the employer.
An NDA is an agreemet that ensures a confidential relationship between the parties who sign the agreement. The document protects confidential proprietary information and trade secrets. Because of the legally binding nature of the documents, it is important to read through an NDA before signing to ensure everything is in order, and that you understand what you’re agreeing to.
NDA’s are essential when talking with co-workers or clients about an idea which is not yet in creation. In this way the document protects ideas.
There are a few different legal terms that are related to intellectual property that are important to understand.
Copyright is content based, and we automatically own the copyright of our content if we have created it.
A copyright dispute is usually won by the person who has done the design/work first. This is why it is important as designers to keep versions of files as well as having low-fi work such as sketches. Also iterations are important as this further proves that the work is yours. For me this adds another valuable reason to keep sketches and files as it can help protect me legally.
Copyright is massive in the movie and music industry, and usually for 70 years the copyright is owned by the company who created it, but once those 70 years are up others can start using the characters or chords that were being used.
Todays class was very informative and helpful, as all this legal protection was something that I had no idea about. It was interesting to see how much behind the scenes work goes into design with all of the documents and legal work. What I learnt today will definitely be useful with my plan to go into freelancing, or decide to launch my own product or service.