Tag Archives: Protection



Protecting your designs - Furniture Contract terms and conditions
May / 15

Furniture Suppliers Beware! Protecting your designs in Contracts

Sharon Givoni Consulting Arts and design, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Protecting ideas

Beware of hidden traps in trading terms and conditions There is a major industry issue faced by many furniture suppliers. Some larger furniture retailers have snuck some clauses into their trading terms which are disadvantageous to suppliers, particularly when it comes to protecting your designs from being copied. One of these clauses purports to give […]

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Avoiding the Gaps in the Copyright/Design Overlap

Sharon Givoni Consulting Arts and design, Copyright, Intellectual Property

Takeaway tips The copyright/design overlap aims to deal with and eliminate dual protection under copyright and design law. Don’t assume your designs are protected by copyright. Consider design registration before you publicly disclose your design. Recently, our firm assisted a client who sold unique handmade jewellery through an online store. He shockingly discovered that another […]

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Ensuring your Soft Drink Brands Sparkle not Fizzle

Sharon Givoni Consulting Food Law

This article examines some dos and don’ts when it comes to trade mark protection for beverages considering real life cases concerning brands such as “Cranberry Classic”, “Crantastic”, “Ruby’s Red”, the “NES” family of Nestle trade marks and Boost juice marks. The strongest form of legal protection you can have for your brand in Australia is […]

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Lessons From The UGG Boot: Why Protecting Your (Global) Brand Is Paramount

Sharon Givoni Consulting Retail and fashion Law

A little-known fact that most business owners aren’t aware of is that just because a word is a cultural icon, this does not mean they are free for public use as a trade mark. In Australia alone, there have been many cases of iconic words or sayings that have been registered as trade marks, which […]

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Chinese Fakes. What can you do about them?

Sharon Givoni Consulting Arts and design, Intellectual Property

One question that Australian IP lawyers often get asked is what you can do to prevent your designs and products from being ripped-off in China. The issues surrounding IP protection are alive and well in China, which is notorious for its culture of copying, with “Naik” (Nike) shoes to “Adidos” (Adidas) tops right through to […]

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Copyright and Wrong: A Basic Guide for Designers

Sharon Givoni Consulting Copyright, Intellectual Property

Here we examine what is copyright, how are creative works protected? How not to infringe someone else’s copyright, all with a particular focus on designers. Read more…

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Preventing Copycats: Weaving Through the Legals

Sharon Givoni Consulting Arts and design

Imagine you come up with a great new pattern for curtain fabric that strikes a chord with consumers, a window shutter design or a special weave that flies off the shelves. What if you find out someone is copying you? Have you protected your IP? Can you stop them? How? This article considers how you […]

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Protecting What’s Special

Sharon Givoni Consulting Protecting ideas

Most of us will have great business ideas from time to time. The challenge is how you can stop others from using them and slavishly copying them …. This article considers the law of confidential information and how you can protect that in Australia. It also considers the importance of registering unique trade marks and […]

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Protecting stripes as trade marks? Adidas did…

Sharon Givoni Consulting Retail and fashion Law

Creating a signature style for your clothing or footwear ranges can set you aside from the competition and even something as a few stripes on a shoe, if consistently used, can over time become a recognisable brand. If a competitor copies a distinctive visual element of your brand, your trade mark registration (if you have […]

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Farmers see red over purple wax tip – How far one woman went

Sharon Givoni Consulting Protecting ideas

Red wax tip bananas are said to be tastier but another thing about them that many people don’t know is that the Queensland-based husband and wife farmers that produce them have protected the red wax tip as registered trade mark… this enables them to stop others from stealing their brand”. Read on to see what […]

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