Information for Small Businesses

Pipers offers information about Intellectual Property for small businesses on these pages.
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Patents are a form of Intellectual Property Right that give legal protection for inventions. Intellectual Property Rights, just like other types of property, can be bought, sold, mortgaged, leased, licensed or used by their owners either in whole or in part.

Over 150 countries have some form of patent system. The patent system allows inventors to retain a monopoly over their inventions for a limited period of time, usually 20 years. This means that any inventor of a granted Patent can legally exclude others from exploiting their invention commercially. That is, making, using, selling, licensing or importing the patented invention without consent from the patentee (inventor or owner) becomes an illegal act (an infringement) and is an offence.

Patents do not protect ideas. They protect new products or a new process for making an old product. In other words a patent is granted for how something works, rather than the way that it looks and will invariably be born as a practical solution to overcome a specific problem.

How something looks such as a new or original shape of an article can be also protected either by copyright, or by a Registered Design.

Applying for a Registered Trademark best protects trade names, brand names and logos.