The best Guide to Intellectual Property Rights for Hotels
In this vast landscape of the hotel industry, protecting Intellectual Property rights has become one of the most crucial things for hotel owners. From different logos to hotel names to new innovative designs and technologies.
Intellectual Property rights have a wide range of assets that contribute to a hotel’s business success. This article intends to capture the intellectual property rights of your hotel.
What are Intellectual Property rights and why are they necessary?
The Intellectual Property rights serve as the legal safeguards for the hotel’s creative assets and innovations. The trademarks play a vital role in protecting the hotel’s brand identity including name and logos and ensure that competitors cannot use similar content that might confuse the customers.
In order to stay ahead in this industry, businesses need to safeguard their intellectual property assets such as trademark logos, copyright content, trade secrets and even geographical indications.
Apart from Intellectual Property rights, there are many important Hotel Laws in India, that you should know as a hotelier.
Following are the Intellectual Property rights you must know as a hotelier.
Trademarks
In today’s world, where more and more people travel to unfamiliar areas. Having a trademark can be a valuable selling point for your hotel.
From the context of the hotel industry, a trademark is a word, phrase, sign, or logo that differentiates the goods and services of one business from another.
Registering your trademark means you are the sole owner and have the right to stop other hotel owners from using them that are the same or similar to prevent confusion.
Copyright
With the rise in the use of social media, the importance of trending hashtags and advertising online campaigns are important for social media marketing.
The Hotel business should always ensure its owner rights of the copyright about work such as the branding, and campaigns.
Things such as food menu, marketing materials, hotel website name and design should fall under copyright law that protects the original content of authorship.
Trade Secrets
One of the crucial steps in the success of food vendors and restaurants is because of unique recipes, formulas and techniques. They should be protected as trade secrets.
Only the minimum number of required people should know the recipe or the process from the beginning to the end. And, The employee contract of those people should include all the confidentiality, non-disclosure, and non-competitive clauses.
Patents
Whenever someone creates something new, they may apply for a patent for their creation or invention. For eg. if a hotel owner who owns a restaurant invents a new set of kitchen equipment of their convenience, they can obtain a patent on the same.
The patent owner holds the right to prevent any other person or organization from making, using or selling the invention.
Geographical Indications (GIs)
Many times the products and services are known from their place of origin. They can be from a country or a region and hold the reputation and quality under such geographical locations.
A mark or a sign on these products that specifies their place of origin is known as a geographical indicator (GI). This GI plays a crucial role in attracting tourists.
Franchising
In simple words, franchising means when a business owner allows another business owner to run the same business by applying the trademarks and other relevant IP assets that align with them.
Generally, the established business allows other business to use their branding. The franchisor has recognised name that allows franchisees to have a head start in the business.
Franchising is one of the fastest business-growing practices that have potential in the hospitality industry. You can franchise your hotel chain name, restaurants and other services such as housekeeping, transportation, hotel management and others.
Merchandising
Whenever the owner of Intellectual Property rights, usually a trademark copyright or website design, or copyright provides the right to another business to apply the mark on other services.
The merchandising provides the owner of the intellectual rights to earn extra revenue from their rights. Merchandising can also be termed a specialized form of IP licensing.
Conclusion
We have learned from this blog post the importance of intellectual property rights and the need to safeguard it. By understanding these rights, one not only protects it’s unique identity but also contributes to the future of the distinct landscape of the hospitality industry.
Get in touch with us.
That was all on Intellectual property rights for your hotel. I hope you liked the article.
Try QloApps – hotel software for an all-in-one property management solution.
To learn more about QloApps, check out our hotel reservation system guide.
QloApps provides to all the hospitality needs such as Hotel Channel Manager, Cloud PMS (QloSaaS), 100+ Addons, and many more.
Connect with us on QloApps Forum to share suggestions. Raise a ticket for any technical assistance.