Exercises: Intellectual and industrial property

Explain what intellectual property is and what it protects: works you create (a comic, a song, code, photos). Give two examples from your school environment and explain when copyright begins (do you have to register the work for it to be yours?).

Distinguish intellectual property from industrial property using these elements from a juice cooperative project: (a) the name "ZumZum" and its logo; (b) the lyrics of the advert song; (c) a new machine that squeezes juice without waste; (d) the poster designed by the team. Indicate which route protects each one: trademark, patent, or copyright.

The figure shows the three routes to protect what the project team creates, but one is covered with a question mark.

1. a) Think about which route is missing (the one protecting the advert song, the comic, or unregistered code) and name it.
2. b) Assign an element from your class project to each box and explain what would happen to that element if another group copied it.

Explain what plagiarism is with a school example: copying the work of a classmate from another class and signing it as your own. How does it differ from 'basing yours on' their structure while citing the source? Why is plagiarism an offence even if nobody reports you?

Match each creation of the project team with the route that protects it — trade mark, patent or copyright: (a) the name 'EcoPatio' and its logo; (b) the new drip-irrigation system with recycled bottles; (c) the presentation video recorded and edited by the team; (d) the lyrics of the advert's rap. Explain one of your choices.

Explain what the public domain is (works whose rights have expired) and give two examples of things you could freely use at the school festival: a Mozart symphony, a 19th-century novel for the play. And what about a photo you simply found on the internet? Argue the difference.

Explain what 'citing the source' means and in which cases it is compulsory. Give one example of correct use and one of incorrect use of an internet image in the project presentation.

Name three elements of a school project that could be protected (name, logo, product design, the advert's song, the app's code) and explain for each one whether the protection arises on its own (copyright) or must be registered (trade mark, patent). Which one should a team with no money protect first?

Your prototype is a school bag organiser with a catchy name, a logo, a clever compartment design, and a presentation video. For each part indicate: which route protects it (trademark, patent, copyright, or industrial design), whether protection is automatic or requires registration, and what would happen if you do not protect it.

You need music and images for your project video. Explain what you can legally use: (a) the latest song by your favourite band; (b) music under a Creative Commons licence, citing the author; (c) a photo found online without specifying the source; (d) music created by yourselves. Explain what Creative Commons licences are and what each type requires you to do (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike).

You want to make an app that is "similar to" an existing one. Draw the line between taking inspiration (legal and common: same concept, own design and code) and plagiarising (copying the logo, name, code, or text). Give two examples on each side of the line and explain the risks of crossing it.

You can do it on paper and send a photo with your answer.

The school magazine team wants to illustrate a report. Analyse each option and say whether it is legal and under what conditions: (a) a photo taken by a student on the team; (b) an image from a free stock library with a licence that requires crediting the author; (c) a photo by a professional photographer taken from their website; (d) a drawing generated by the team copying the style of a famous illustrator without signing their name. Explain what risk option (c) has.

Your jam cooperative wants to call itself 'La Frutera' and you discover that a fruit shop in another city has been using that name for $10$ years. Explain what problem there may be if you become well known (confusion, trade mark rights), which check you should have made before printing the posters, and propose two solutions if you fall in love with the name (adding the village's name, changing to 'La Frutera del Instituto'), assessing their risks.

Another school team accuses you of copying their stall idea (they also sell healthy breakfasts). Analyse where the legal and ethical line is: general ideas are not protected, but their concrete expression is (name, logo, designs, texts). Write your defence in three points and a coexistence proposal so that both stalls can operate without a war.

Your project advert's song uses the chorus of a famous track in the background, 'just $15$ seconds'. Explain why the duration doesn't save the infringement (what matters is the use without permission of a work with rights), which legal options you have (royalty-free music, a Creative Commons licence, composing it yourselves, asking for permission) and which one you would choose with a zero budget.

Design the team's 'materials policy' for the next audiovisual project: where images, music and typefaces may be taken from (free libraries, own works, the public domain), which source register you will keep (a file with the link, author and licence of each resource) and what you will do if a resource turns out to have copyright halfway through editing. Explain why this register protects you.

Your school cooperative sells healthy breakfasts under the brand «EcoBocata» with its own logo. After three months of profitable operation, another group from the school opens an adjacent stall called «EcoBocatas» with almost identical typography and colours, causing a 35 % drop in your sales due to student confusion. Your team did not register the trademark with the OEPM (the official fee is around 125 €), but you have dated sketches approved by the school management since the beginning of the school year.

1. a) Justify whether your decision not to register the trademark at the beginning was rational from the point of view of a school mini-enterprise's cost-benefit analysis. Based on the concepts of industrial property and unfair competition, analyse what defence mechanisms you have against this conflict and what legal weakness you present compared to someone who does hold a registered trademark.
2. b) Design a formal conflict resolution proposal to present to the school management and the competing group. The plan must demand specific commercial differentiation measures that eliminate market confusion and establish a constructive solution for the fair allocation of the sales space.

Your artisan jam cooperative has a maximum budget of 100 € to protect its intangible assets. You have developed four key elements: the trade name and logo, an exclusive recipe with a thermal method that extends shelf life without additives, the advertising jingle, and the illustrated poster.

1. a) Knowing that registering a trademark with the OEPM costs about 125 €, a patent exceeds 600 €, and copyright arises for free with the creation of the work, design and justify the optimal allocation of your 100 € budget. Argue which specific legal or technical route you would assign to each of the four assets to maximise their protection without running a deficit.
2. b) Suppose a competitor buys your product on the market, deduces the exact recipe through laboratory analysis, and sells it at half price. Predict the legal effectiveness of your protection strategy against that action and evaluate whether you could legally stop their sales or claim compensation.

The school is debating which protection regime to apply to the school's new official mascot: registering it with «all rights reserved» or releasing it under an open license like Creative Commons.

1. a) Evaluate the economic and strategic impact of both options on the educational community. Analyse what incentives or barriers each model creates for initiatives by the students themselves (such as clubs or trip fundraising) versus potential opportunistic uses by local private businesses (such as tutoring academies or copy shops).
2. b) Design a tailor-made license for the mascot by selecting and justifying which permissions you grant (reproduction, modification) and which conditions or prohibitions you impose (attribution, commercial purposes, obligation to share alike). Justify how your license would operate if a private tutoring academy uses the modified mascot in its advertising leaflets.

Your student cooperative launched "StudySwap", a note-sharing app that has reached 1.500 downloads at your school. Ten months later, you discover an exact copy on the app store called "StudySwap Plus", with your same colors and interface, published by a student from another school who charges 1,20 € per download. You did not register the trademark with the OEPM, but you keep the programming repositories with timestamps and the original design files.

1. a) Evaluate the legal strength of your position, distinguishing between the rights over the source code, the visual appearance (interface), and the app's name. Predict what procedural advantages you would have had if you had paid the 125 € trademark registration fee before launch.
2. b) Design a sequential and well-founded action plan to get the platform to take down the clone from the store and demand the return of the undue revenue generated by the copy, justifying what technical evidence you must provide at each step.

Your school's comic club created a superhero and published several comic strips online. Months later, you discover that a local gift shop has printed the character on T-shirts and mugs, selling them for 15 € and 8 € respectively. When asked for an explanation, the shopkeeper argues that "everything posted on the internet is free to use" and that "they are giving you free advertising".

1. a) Rebut the shopkeeper's two arguments legally and economically. Justify, based on the Intellectual Property Law, when protection of a work arises, when it actually enters the public domain, and which rights (moral and economic) are being infringed by this sale.
2. b) Design the terms of an out-of-court settlement proposal for the assignment of rights with the shop that is advantageous to the club. Establish the royalty percentage you would demand on each product sold, the supervisory mechanisms to ensure the character's image is not degraded, and your proposed solution for the items that have already been sold.

In the debate on intellectual property, two contrasting economic views coexist: considering it a harmful artificial monopoly that restricts access to culture and holds back collaborative creativity, or defending it as an indispensable incentive to finance the cost and risk of original creation.

1. a) Analyze this conflict by applying the economic concepts of public good (non-rivalry and non-excludability) and market failure. Predict what would happen to creative production if the legal protection term were 0 years (no exclusivity) compared to a scenario where protection were perpetual (infinite). Justify the effect of each extreme on prices, incentives, and access to culture.
2. b) Design a proposal for an intermediate legal framework that improves social efficiency compared to current regulations (which grant protection for the author's entire life plus 70 years). Determine a newly justified time limit and design two mandatory copyright exceptions (for example, in the field of education or artificial intelligence), clearly defining their conditions so that they do not destroy the author's business model.

Your entrepreneurship team has created an ergonomic fabric organizer for backpacks, a mobile app for planning school assignments, a commercial logo, and the music for the promotional video. You only have 80 € in initial capital. You know that registering a trademark costs around 125 €, registering an industrial design exceeds 100 €, and copyright on artistic works or software does not require paying fees to legally exist.

1. a) Evaluate the economic risk and vulnerability of each of the four assets. Design the resource allocation strategy, justifying which elements you leave without institutional registration, what free reliable proof methods you would apply to prove authorship, and what sales threshold would justify formally registering the trademark or industrial design in the future.
2. b) A school supply distributor asks you for the cutting patterns and technical specifications of the organizer to evaluate a potential order before signing any agreement. Design a strategy based on trade secrets and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), assessing its economic advantages and predicting its limits if the distributor decides to launch a product with slight variations.

Two school years ago, a 4th-year ESO student drew a mascot for the school sports day using the school's tablets. Today, the AMPA has ordered 300 hoodies featuring the mascot to sell them at 22 € and fund the end-of-year trip. The author demands that the sale be stopped, claiming that she has not assigned her rights, while the school management argues that, since it was created during school hours and using school equipment, the mascot belongs to the school's heritage.

1. a) Issue a reasoned legal opinion on the ownership of the work. Justify whether being a student or using school resources implies an automatic assignment of copyright, distinguishing between the fate of moral rights (inalienable) and economic exploitation rights.
2. b) Design the key clauses of a settlement agreement between the student, the school, and the AMPA to unblock the situation. Define: the type of exploitation assignment (exclusive or non-exclusive, territorial and temporal scope), fair financial compensation or sponsorship for the author, and the control mechanisms she will retain to authorize future commercial uses.

Topic Challenge. Did you know that when you purchase any product you exercise consumer rights and connect with industrial property? Your mission is to audit an item from your home and prepare a reasoned proposal on its legal and safe consumption.

1. Official search: Choose a product from your home (sneakers, mobile phone, peripheral, or video game). Access the open database of the OEPM (Spanish Patent and Trademark Office) and locate its official trademark or design registration (indicate owner and registration number).

2. Consumer rights: Research current regulations in Spain and summarize what rights protect you: the $3$ years of legal warranty, the repair/replacement period, and the $14$ days of withdrawal for online purchases.

3. Comparative report: Write a brief proposal ($1,0$ to $1,5$ pages long) where you contrast purchasing the original product against a counterfeit one. Analyze the infringement of intellectual and industrial property, the total loss of consumer warranties, and the risks regarding safety or fraud.

Evaluation criteria:

• Thorough retrieval of real registration data from the OEPM.

• Accurate application of consumer legal rights and deadlines.

• Critical argumentation on the economic impact of respecting industrial property versus piracy.

• Organized structure, conceptual thoroughness, and expository clarity of the report.