The smartphone lovers were taken by storm in July this year when Xiaomi Inc. launched its smartphones in India. Though it only started selling in India in July, it quickly became country’s fastest growing smartphone brand; with minimal marketing, it was outselling even low-cost smartphones running Google Inc.’s Android One. However, as the saying goes, this was too good to last. Ericsson, a brand which had left the market long ago, alleged that Xiaomi has been violating eight of its Intellectual Property Rights (patents) related to 3G, EDGE, AMR, and other technologies, and that its repeated communications to the Chinese company to pay royalties or to desist altogether went unheeded.
Hence, it decided to lodge a suit in Delhi's High Court who told Xiaomi to stop hawking its ultra-hot smartphones on partner Flipkart's websites until February 5, when the court will again hear the case in the court.
This is a miserable thing for the makers of Xiaomi technology and moreover for the people buying products. The company managed to seize 1.5 percent market share in India in a hard-to-believe time span of two months which is close to only one other company, namely Motorola, and its 5 percent share took it at least nine months.
However, the High Court’s strict decision in this matter proves that in India, The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are taken very seriously. Intellectual Property can be defined as anything which is a creation of human intellect and it refers to the ideas, knowledge, invention, innovation, creativity, and research etc., all being the product of human mind and is similar to any property, whether movable or immovable, wherein the proprietor or the owner may exclusively use his property at will and has the right to prevent others from using it, without his permission. Thus, the rights relating to intellectual property are known as 'Intellectual Property Rights'.
Intellectual Property Laws can be divided into two major parts-
1) Tangible laws which include Private property (Primogeniture), Water industry, Electricity and Competition law.
2) Intangible laws which include Copyright, Patent, Trademark, Trade secret, Authors' rights, Related rights and Moral rights etc.
Precise knowledge of your rights under IPR is essential in the successful running of a business of any kind. Intellectual Property protection is critical to encouraging innovation. Without protection of ideas, businesses and individuals would not reap the full benefits of their inventions and would focus less on research and development.
Similarly, artists would not be fully compensated for their creations and cultural vitality would suffer as a result. It gives the owner an exclusive set of rights in the market over their creations (for example, a Patented Invention allows a monopoly of twenty years, and means that a Patent provides its owner with a right to prevent or exclude all others from commercially using it).
It helps in obtaining higher returns on their investments, since owning IPR may not only enhance the bargaining power, but may also be exploited through licenses in return for royalty payments. IP is important because it enhances the market value and increases future profit expectations of an organization in the eyes of investors and financing institutions.
Thus when IP provides so many benefits, its protection is essential. Your IPR have the power to set your business apart from competitors giving it the slight edge in areas of innovation. This, in turn, offers customers something new and different, which makes the brand value better and forms an essential part of your marketing or branding. Hence when the value of your IP is high, it can be used as a collateral for loans.
At Legato, we help you find the perfect IPR professional to suit your needs, which leads to effective Outsourcing of Intellectual Property. Be it Patents, Trademarks, drafting Intellectual Property Agreements or any other Intellectual Property Law, we boast expertise in all these fields in the form of specialists who are members of our organization. The best part is that all these members’ qualification and experience is verified by us and we guarantee the best services. Here, quality is essential and we make sure the professionals hired by you through us are the very best and most cost effective. And since these individuals are highly trustworthy, no information leak or misuse of IP is possible.
So start your project by visiting our website www.legato.com and hire an IP professional to handle your project.