Protecting your intellectual property, especially copyright and confidentiality issues. You can read our advice, or about the products or services we offer related to this focus area below:
This article describes the best method of approaching (or process of conducting) an IP audit or an intangible asset audit. It involves five steps: Engage, gather documents, conduct background research and agree on audit plan (Step 1) Get buy-in from [...]
Intellectual property or IP is property created by someone's mind or intellect the mind, including literary and artistic works, inventions, designs, symbols, names and images. We often have to help clients understand intellectual property, come up with an intellectual property strategy, [...]
Conducting thorough Intellectual Property audits or IP audits of all the intangible assets or intellectual property (IP) that an organisation owns is a time-consuming and often costly business. You want to get it right and make sure that maximum value is [...]
An intellectual property audit enables organisations to know what intellectual property or IP assets they own. We actually prefer the term intangible assets to the term IP assets. Intangible assets include both legal intangibles (typical IP) and competitive intangibles (such [...]
Databases and the data in them have become very valuable assets. People often ask, what is the law relating to data ownership? What is a database? How do you define a database in an agreement? How does the law [...]
Trademark applications give a trade mark powerful protection against infringement. By default, trademarks are protected by the common law, but it's often difficult and expensive to protect your brand this way. Trademarks can be registered under the Trade Marks Act, No. 194 [...]
There is nothing worse than finding a web site that is a blatant copy of your own. "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" or so the saying goes. But it really can be no laughing matter when it impacts [...]
Your online brand is quite possibly your most valuable asset, and worthy of protection. You will spend a great deal of time and money to find your brand name, and you want to use it to grow your business. You do not want [...]
A common issue nowadays is who owns the copyright in content posted to website posts or blogs - content in the form of text, visual images or the like, where a website allows this sort of participation by users. We [...]
Your employee develops software for his own use as a way improve his work performance, or for use by the employer. Who owns the copyright in the software? At a first glance, the answer seems obvious: The Copyright Act 98 of [...]
If a website provider includes databases on its site, can it stop other people from using or reproducing data from those databases? Yes. A database is protected as a literary work under the Copyright Act 98 of 1978 whilst computer [...]
Can a website provider use third-party content on its website without permission from the third-party content provider? No. This would amount to a contravention of the Copyright Act 98 of 1978 if the content as the copyrighted work was first [...]
