Fashion bloggers create content which is inspired and curated based on their day-to-day beauty hacks, activities, personal interests, and experiences. They develop cosmetic digital content, which they share with the public through social media platforms in a fashionable manner.
Most beauty bloggers assume that their articles, blogs, vlogs or any other content might not be worthy of intellectual property (IP) protection. However, to avoid content duplicity and to maintain the originality of the content, Intellectual Property protection becomes essential for fashion and beauty bloggers, especially if they see their lifestyle blog as something that generates revenue.
Real Essence of Intellectual Property Law for Lifestyle Bloggers
Intellectual property is really important for any business or brand as it acts as an intangible asset, the rights for which is conferred on originality, real inventions, and safeguard of creative works of the individuals.
In the Indian continent, Intellectual Property laws include three main areas: Patents, Copyright, and Trademark laws. At the same time, for lifestyle bloggers, the crucial Intellectual Property protection areas are mostly limited to copyright and trademark,
Note – A lifestyle blog owner comes up with a new invention kind of thing or idea that can be patentable with marketing agencies.
Copyright
As per the Copyright Act, ‘Copyright’ generally protects the original work of the owner, which is in a tangible form or expression such as music, art, poetry, written works or graphic works. The rights granted to copyright owner are varied:
- They can create and form scrape up work that has already been copyrighted.
- And, they have a right to partially or fully sell their work, transfer its ownership, or can license their copyrighted work.
[READ: 5 Tips For Starting a Fashion Blog]
Trademarks
Trademark is a name, word, symbol, image, device, or a combination of colours, or a mix of everything; thereof, a registered trademark helps the brand in identifying the source and rights of products and differentiate between them from others. It also gives an edge to the owner of the mark like getting an exclusive right to use the particular mark to sell his products and services.
For a lifestyle blog, Trademark protection usually refers to the unique name and logo of your blog, along with the domain which can be protected by a trademark registration when the registrar is satisfied that all of the blog components are unique.
There is no sense of registering a trademark if the blogger does not have plans to explore or expand their blogs commercially. What happens at the end of the day, a brand identity should be used as a trademark, that usually distinguishes different products and services in a commercial platform. For example, the kind of blogs that are commercially expanding and using subscription models to store, distribute or syndicate their content can consider registration.
Some Famous Blogs Registered as a Trademark
Pixiwoo (UK)
Nic Chapman and Sisters Sam registered their own lifestyle blog name since they had commercial expansion plans. They both came up with the fashion brand called Real Technique® which is now quite famous among fashion enthusiasts.
Patent
Unlike trademarks, a patent registration extends to a unique idea or novel inventions and processes, and generic concepts like beauty and lifestyle blogs cannot be protected under the patent law. Lifestyle Blogger will have to keep in mind that the beauty product or hacks shall have an understanding of being applicable in an industrial and commercial process. So, even if the beauty and fashion blogger comes up with an innovative product, like the Pixiwoo sisters, only the beauty product can be patented and not the blog itself.
