Anti-copying in design
Published: 13th May 2021
How we protect our ideas and why it’s important for our customers
The theme of this year’s World Intellectual Property Day in April was IP & SMEs: Taking your ideas to market. So, as a SME ourselves, we thought it was a great time to talk about the importance of protecting our ideas – for us, our customers and the industry as a whole.
We’re a member of ACID (Anti Copying in Design) – the UK’s leading design and intellectual property campaigning organisation – and the majority of our products and designs are protected by copyright and patents.
With an in-house team of designers we’ve developed an extensive back catalogue of expertly tooled designs over the years – providing brands and retailers with rapid access to innovative, high quality, cost-effective designs and products. As the originators of those designs, we actively safeguard the ideas we’ve worked hard to create, and protect them from being copied via trademarks, patents and registered designs for example. We’re best known as the original pioneers of the pre-filled clipstrip and have gone on to evolve the humble clipstrip and create over 1,000 variations for brands and retailers.
As this year’s World Intellectual Property Day highlighted, SMEs play a critical role in the economy and IP rights help small and medium sized businesses to compete with global giants and provide continuous innovation and creativity. With brands and retailers facing multiple challenges in 2021, alongside the need to embrace new opportunities, that innovation and creativity is needed more than ever.
Our trademarks, patents and registered designs also let our customers know that, as the original source of their chosen products, we will deliver exceptional quality and value. That’s helped us develop trusted, long-lasting, collaborative relationships with the brands and retailers we work with.
The growing focus on sustainability, including embracing new materials and designing out waste, along with changing retail environments and customer behaviour, is driving a new generation of innovative new designs and products. That makes IP more important than ever, for us as a business, and the brands and retailers that come to us for flexible new solutions.
In a nutshell, IP rewards innovation and that’s good for us all.