My product has a copycat. What should I do?

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This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Asia Law Network where we publish articles written by lawyers on their advice for startup founders. For more articles in this series, go here.

It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, product owners probably wouldn’t agree. Having your competitor copy your product can lead to a range of outcomes, none of which are particularly desirable.

So, if you want to know how you can prevent others from copying your product, read on.

What intellectual property rights do you have in your product?

As a first step, it is critical to understand what intellectual property (IP) rights you have in your product. Different products have different types of IP rights. You need to understand these before you can move on to preventing others from copying your product.

The most common types of IP are briefly discussed below.

Trademark

A trademark is a “badge of origin” which distinguishes your goods and services from those of others. A trademark can be in the form of a word (or words), a logo, or a combination of both. For example, some famous trademarks are “Samsung” (a word), the Nike “swoosh”  (a logo), and Starbucks’ sign (a combination of words and a logo).

If you have registered your trademark with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), you will have certain legal rights. However, if you have not registered it, you will still have legal rights to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, provided that you can show there is goodwill in the trademark.

Copyright

Copyright grants the copyright owner a bundle of rights with respect to original works such as paintings, sculptures, novels, and musical compositions. This essentially prevents others from copying the works. An original work enjoys copyright protection as long as certain conditions are fulfilled. There is no system of copyright registration in Singapore, and no need to register your work to enjoy copyright protection.

Software source code may be protected as a literary work under copyright law in Singapore. The software owner can prevent a third party from copying his source code, but he cannot prevent someone from independently developing a new software that fulfills the same function.

Patent

Patents are rights granted under the Patents Act to protect inventions. They are only granted if an invention is novel and involves an inventive step. In order to obtain patent protection in Singapore, it is necessary to file a patent application with IPOS. While this is time-consuming and expensive, the rights granted by a patent are more extensive than other categories of IP.

How was your product copied?

What can you do if someone is copying your product?