We Lecture on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Start-Ups

This morning the KHM Law Firm lawyers, attorney-at-law (radca prawny) Edyta Kozak-Hamala and attorney-at-law Olaf Maciejowski, led a class on the protection of basic intellectual property rights in start-ups. They took a class from a Kraków secondary school on a journey through the legal provisions, explaining a number of complexities connected with the legal aspects of opening and running a start-up.

The topics covered included:

• brand protection, including an answer to the question of how to choose a name so as to avoid potential disputes with another entrepreneur,
• the risk of infringing the right to a name,
• the procedure for applying for a trade mark, including absolute and relative grounds for refusal of registration,
• what can be a trade mark, with a discussion of interesting examples of unconventional marks, including a colour (for example, Milka) or a sound (Tarzan's call) as a mark,
• the granting of patents for inventions,
• the differences between a utility mark, an invention and a utility model,
• the possibility of placing on a website or in advertising brochures the logos of clients with whom one works,
• legal aspects of protecting information (confidentiality) in the activities of start-ups,

all of this in the context of examples from KHM Law Firm's practice and based on generally applicable law (copyright law, combating unfair competition, industrial property law, the provisions of the Civil Code), case law and data from publicly accessible registers.