Legal Issues

Legal Issues

Star Wars copyright article -http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12910683

‘Lucas loses Star Wars copyright case at Supreme Court’

A prop designer who made the original Stormtrooper helmets for Star Wars has won hid copyright battle with director George Lucas over his right to sell replicas.

Andrew Ainsworth has fought for half a decade and has spent almost £700,000 to win against the movies legal team.

Intellectual Property definition:

Most businesses rely on bright ideas, whether it is developing new products, having a great brand, creating new products or having eye catching designs.

Your ideas are your passport for business success… so how do you protect your idea from being exploited by others?

Four areas of the IP (Intellectual property) law:

1.     Trademarks- Used by businesses to protect their brands. Can apply to a name or logo or both. Only needs renewing every 10 years.

2.     Copyright- Automatically exists in documents, photos, plans, maps and websites. Any of these in the business are already protected for free. Copyright will last for up to 70 years after your lifetime.

3.     Design rights- If people buy your products because of the way they look e.g. jewelry, furniture or clothes you would want to know about design rights. It isn’t expensive and it covers the UK and abroad. Even if you don’t register your designs, you will get unregistered design rights.

4.     Patents- If you invent a new product or process you need to think about patents. Patents can last for up to 20 years! However, registering it can be a very complicated and expensive process. It is beneficial because you can get professional advice.

Freedom of information act:

Provides access for the public to find out information. Public authorities are obliged to publish the information and members of the public (e.g. police and hospitals) are allowed to access it.

Data Protection Act:

UK law which mandates that all business operating in the UK has 8 principles to follow. The average person living in the UK has 4000 pieces of data collected from them by businesses and then stored in their data bases each week. Customer data is now the life blood for every business on the planet and the DPA requires UK businesses to process this data fairly and securely.

1.     Requires the data subjects consent

2.     Should only be kept for the reason it was collected

3.     Should be kept accurate

4.     Should be kept up to date

5.     Should only be kept for if it is needed

6.     Should be made available to the data subject

7.     Should be processed securely

8.     Should be processed within the UK

Copyright, designs and patents act 1998:

Everyone can recreate existed media or new media in any way you want. Only something that publishing houses and big movies in the film industry use. Only originally applied to newspaper firms and the film industry. Nowadays, it is all available online but doesn’t necessarily mean that it is free or legal to take. We should respect artists and creators by purchasing their products instead of illegally downloading them.

Slander

An employee planted drugs in a police officer’s drink in Utah.

Human rights act 2014

Human rights are the values of society to keep people fair, just and equal. It is used to protect children, people in care, mentally ill, victims of abuse, the elderly, teachers and prisoners. Our human rights are protected by the law, that means that we can do something if our rights are attacked.  People want to take the human rights act down; our rights are under threat! Years ago, kings and queens who ruled the country only gave rights to those people that they liked, so not lower class or working class, very rarely the middle class. We know have rights for racism, gay rights, woman’s rights, slavery etc. Human rights don’t exist in Countries such as China and North Korea as they are still run by dictatorship, so they must follow what the King says. After world war 2 (Hitler) Europe decided that that was never again to happen. Simple document of basic human rights: The European convention on Human rights. Things that were discussed was:

The rights to life, Rights to liberty and security, Freedom of speech.

50 years after  (1948) in 1998, our government then wrote the human rights act.