Julie works as a pigment engineer at ColourTech, a tech company that looks to combine technology and pigments to create new adaptive-colour paints. Julie is also a talented artist and in her
This is an exercise work on Copyrights and Patents. Please indicate the law, statute, case file and reference.
Julie works as a pigment engineer at ColourTech, a tech company that looks to combine technology and pigments to create new adaptive-colour paints. Julie is also a talented artist and in her free time makes videos of her paintings and drawings for her 100,000 followers on TikTok. She often would use materials from her lab at work to make paintings, even making art there after hours. ColourTech was aware of this and had given Julie permission to do so. After work, Julie had been experimenting with a new kind of pigment that could change colour when an electrical current was run through it. Depending on the strength of the current, the pigment would change to any possible colour. This was, however, just a concept and no major breakthroughs had been made on the project. One night, while making art after work hours in her lab and tinkering with the pigments, she had a eureka moment and discovered that adding a precise amount of iron to the pigment would make it change from a turquoise blue to a deep orange when an electrical current was run through it. The pigment would return from orange to turquoise when the current was turned off. Ecstatic, Julie creates a beautiful painting of the statue of liberty in her lab and films the process on her phone. She then soldered a battery pack to the back of the canvas and ran two wires into the painted front. When she turned the battery on, the turquoise parts turned to a deep orange and when she turned it off they returned to turquoise. Julie spends all night working on the painting in her lab until her boss, Pauline, the CEO of ColourTech arrives the next morning. Julie immediately tells Pauline about her discovery and shows her the painting, the pigment, and explains how it all works. Both agree that this is a huge breakthrough and Pauline wants to schedule a press conference to announce ColourTech’s newly created paint technology. They plan for Julie to demonstration of the paint technology by making a painting live for a limited audience of press members and showing how the colours change. They invite a handful of reporters to their office but require that all cell phones and other recording devices be handed to the security guards before entering the building. Julie arranged for this with Pauline’s approval so that she could showcase the new paint on her own personal TikTok. Julie prepares a speech about the development of the paint, her process as an engineer, and explaining her breakthrough. She then quickly paints a motorcycle, a traffic sign, and a beach scene on a canvas to demonstrate the variety of potential uses the paint may have. She turns the current on and the paint changes colour leaving the small crowd awestruck. She films the whole thing so she can post it later to her TikTok. Unkown to Julie and Pauline, a reporter named Augustino brought a second cell phone with him and only gave one to the security guard, sneaking his second phone inside the event. He videos LLB Intellectual Property Law 2022/23 1 Birmingham City University 5 Julie’s entire demonstration but because he needed to conceal the fact that he was recording, the video turned out to be of poor quality. He immediately posted the video of the demonstration to his verified Twitter page which he often used to report news events and had over 300,000 followers. He captioned the video “Company creates colour changing paint that can only bounce between two ugly colours…no breakthrough here.” When Julie later goes to post videos of her colour changing paintings to TikTok, she is livid when she realises that Augustino’s video has gone viral. The next day, Pauline informs Julie that ColourTech intends to file a patent application for the colour-changing paint she has developed. However, later that day Pauline receives an email from Pigmentology, a competing company, explaining that they are aware of ColourTech’s new invention and will be objecting to its patent application based on their existing patent for a paint that changes from white to black when heat is applied to it. This process is achieved by adding silver to the pigment. Also, Julie has begun thinking that this invention was her idea, her concept, and her discovery. She is starting to wonder if perhaps she should be the rightful owner of the patent- or at least a portion of it. She mentions this to Pauline and is told that the colour changing paint is 100% the intellectual property of ColourTech.
Q.1(a) Advise Julie regarding the copyright issues:-
(i) Is the painting of a beach scene that Julie created for the demonstration a copyright-protected work and is the video she created of her painting it a copyright protected work?
(ii) If Julie’s painting of the beach scene is a copyright protected work, does the video recording made by Augustino and/or the posted video as it appears on his Twitter channel amount to an infringement of that copyright? If so, what would be the appropriate remedy/remedies?
(iii) If the beach painting and/or the video recording are copyright works, who owns the copyright?
Q.1(b) Advise Monteiro regarding the patent issues:
(i) Is the electric colour-changing pigment patentable and what impact, if any, on its patentability does either of the following have?
Julie’s demonstration of the technology and how it works to Pauline
Julie’s demonstration of the technology to the press LLB Intellectual Property Law 2022/23 1 Birmingham City University 6
Augustino’s video of Julie’s demonstration published to Twitter, and
the claim made by Pigmentology
(ii) If the pigment is patentable, who owns the patent, Julie or ColourTech?
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