Application protection is needed to provide the company with a temporary monopoly on the production and sale of the developed product, which increases the value of the company, and the protected product looks much more attractive to investors
After creating a new unique application, the author is faced with the question of how to protect it from copying and from unscrupulous competitors after publication on popular platforms. The application itself is not subject to legal protection. However, you can patent the interface, program code, and the means of individualization used.
Possible options for legal protection of the application include:
1. Trademark - you can register the original application logo, character images, slogan as a trademark. However, it must be remembered that the legal protection of a trademark extends only to the goods or services specified in the certificate. When registering a trademark for an application, choose class 9 (applications and programs) and class 42 (services for developing programs and applications). Once a trademark is registered, protection will be valid for 10 years and can be renewed an unlimited number of times.
2. Industrial design - as an industrial design, you can protect the application interface (unique design, unusual arrangement of icons, galleries, dynamic elements), since a patent for an industrial design secures the rights to the appearance of the application. The term of protection of a patent for an industrial design is 5 years with the possibility of extension to 25 years. However, if the interface is significantly updated, the patent does not apply to it.
3. Computer program - the code in which the application is written can be protected as a computer program. In this case, the program can be protected as a literary work. The period of protection of rights to a program is up to 70 years after the death of the last author, and the copyright holder of the program can be an individual.
3. Invention - protecting an application as an invention is more difficult. In this case, it is necessary to identify a patentable subject matter (usually algorithms), carefully draw up a formula and correctly file a patent. The validity period of the invention is 20 years with annual support;
5. Copyright objects - these include original video, music, texts, articles, everything that was created specifically for the application. At the same time, the rights to such works arise at the time of their creation, and for an additional measure of protection, the work can be deposited (stored in a special storage facility, which allows you to confirm authorship on a certain date and secure it in case of disputes about authorship).
The best option for obtaining exclusive rights to an application is comprehensive protection of all its components.
To prevent competitors and other interested parties from making copies of the author's application, it is important not to publish screenshots of the interface, design or source code in the public space before submitting an application. Only after receiving a patent can its copyright holder use effective and legal tools to protect the product of his intellectual activity.
In order to avoid conflicts of interest and avoid litigation, if there are several authors participating in the creation of the application, it is necessary to conclude an agreement within the framework of which the copyright holder is determined, all authors are indicated and the amount and terms of payment of remuneration are determined for them.
