Glossary K - O

K

Knowledge assets: They are assets of an organization such as ideas, inventions, technologies, brands, general knowledge, software, designs or processes.

Licensing (intellectual property rights): The transfer of a portion of the intellectual property rights from the owner called licensor to another party called licensee. It is not a complete transfer of intellectual property rights as in the case of an assignment. Licensing may be subject to a variety of terms and conditions specified in the licensing agreement.

Maintenance fee (industrial designs): Fee required in order to maintain the rights to an industrial design for a second five-year period.
Maintenance fees (patents): Yearly fees required to either, maintain a patent application or to keep a patent in force. Maintenance fees encourage the applicant or patent holder to re-evaluate the economic value of their applications and patents.

Non-disclosure agreement: Non-disclosure agreements, known also as confidentiality agreements, are contracts in which the parties agree not to disclose the secret information they share and not to make unauthorised use of such information (e.g. a secret innovation or creation).
Novelty (patents): In order to receive a grant for your invention you must be the original inventor (or the assignee of the invention),and it must be the first such invention in the world.

Online intellectual property databases (Online IP databases): Online databases containing different collections of intellectual property documents (e.g. patent, trade-mark or copyright documents).
Open for Public Inspection (patents): The date that a patent application is first made available to the public.
Opposition (trade-marks): The process whereby members of the public may object to the registration of a trade-mark if they have grounds for doing so.