A new online digital fingerprinting service has been launched to help protect designs and innovations from copycat misuse.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation has launched a new online business platform, WIPO PROOF, which safeguards intellectual assets by creating date—and time-stamped digital fingerprints when information is uploaded.
The assets’ owners receive tamper-proof evidence to safeguard every stage of the development cycle through to commercialisation. The WIPO aims to speed up any later litigation over copyright, design, or patent by recording and confirming each stage.
The WIPO says that the platform can protect any intellectual output generated in the form of a digital file. This could protect designs and other creative ideas, data training sets for algorithms, or research results.
Commercial lawyer Victoria Holland said:
“This has far-reaching effects in potentially protecting intellectual property from misuse or misappropriation, which can be particularly important where the assets themselves may not satisfy the requirements for registrable or unregistrable IP rights at a point in time.”
Registrable IP rights require registration to secure protection; unregistrable rights cannot be registered; they arise automatically through usage.
Victoria added:
“In our increasingly digital world with increased collaboration, breaches of IP security are at a heightened risk, so anything that creators can do to protect themselves is important. This development has implications for a wide range of situations. For example, a concept for a television show could be ‘fingerprinted’ before ideas are shared with a broadcaster; or in situations such as tech development or scientific research, where originators wish to open up their ideas to shared development, the original concept can, in theory, be secured before doing so.”
The cost of each WIPO PROOF fingerprint token is set at 20 Swiss Francs. You can also buy them in a bundle. A simple infographic from WIPO shows how the new process works.
Call corporate and commercial partner Victoria Holland today.
Note: This is not legal advice; it provides information of general interest about current legal issues.