What is Intellectual Property

Intellectual property (IP) is a legal field that refers to

creations of the mind such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights Intellectual property is a bundle of exclusive rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial Dated back to 1866, the Nestl company had acquired profound knowledge of markets all over the world over the previous 130 years

An introduction of Nestle
Nestl is the leading position in the global food

industry with operated factories in 77 countries and sells its products on all six continents Peter Brabeck-Letmathe took the job as CEO of Nestl in June 1997, he faced the challenge of having to improve the companys profitability In order to generate the financial means required to invest in growth initiatives, Brabeck launched a suite of process innovation initiative in an effort to maximizing existing assets, maximizing capacity utilization, and maximizing distribution logistics.

 He also identified new growth opportunities in the

organic growth in the mature market, which could only be reached by strengthening Nestls innovation capacity Nestl is the worlds largest food and beverage company and employs around 265,000 people worldwide The company has a diverse range of product lines including: Soluble Coffee Infant Nutrition Confectionery

 Dairy Chocolate Milk Beverages Bottled Water Pet Care Ice Cream

 In each of these food ranges, Nestl aims to be the

market leader and to provide at least one leading brand for each product line In this context, the companys brands and patents are critical Nestl market their products under six strategic global brands: NESTL, NESCAF, NESTEA, MAGGI, PURINA and BUITONI Local trademarks are also registered to accommodate the diverse cultural nuances around the world

Sales by product in year 2006

Alcon Laboratories, Galderma 26.3% Nescaf, Nesquik, Milo, Nestea, Perrier, San Pellegino

Chocolate Kit Kat, Smarties, Confectionery Crunch, After Biscuits Eight

25.8%
Milk Products Nutrition Nestl, NAN, NIDO, Dreyer's, Mvenpick

Cooking Aids Ice Cream 11.6% Prepared Dishes PetCare

Stouffer's, Buitoni, Maggi Pro Plan, Purina ONE, Friskies, Dog Chow

Nestl SA (Holding Co.)

Funding Royalties

Nestec SA (Knowledge Co.)

Knowledge and Licences

Operating Company

The Nestle Approach

The re-organization of the companys internal IP

legal structure has allowed Nestl to control and defend its patents and trademarks in a centrally coordinated manner. Nestl places high value on its IP and recognizes it as a major financial asset The legal protection of IP is a key element in maintaining this value. IP is valued and guarded to the same extent as other valuable assets within the business.

 Intellectual property rights are usually limited to

non-rival goods, that is, goods which can be used or enjoyed by many people simultaneously - the use by one person does not exclude use by another. The term "intellectual property" denotes the specific legal rights described , and not the intellectual work itself Company has organized the IP department so that it had at least one patent lawyer and one trademark lawyer in each area of the business

Nestle Supports IPR Programs

The global food company expressed willingness to

support the advocacy programs of IP Philippines aimed at promoting awareness and respect for IPRs among the Filipino youth. Both Nestle and IP Philippines believe that involving today's youth in the country's program of promoting creativity and innovations is highly instrumental in strengthening the IP regime and achieving national development. The effective management of the Intellectual Property system is vital to the nation's advancement and international competitiveness

Nestls IP Assets
Trademarks:

340 strategic brands protected by 75,000 trademark registrations in different countries around the world in accordance with Nestls business interests 6,000 local brands protected by 28,000 trademark registrations
Patents:

9,018 granted patents covering countries on every continent 6,127 pending patents

What is Copyright
Copyright law grants authors, composers, computer

programmers, website designers and other creators legal protection for their literary, artistic, dramatic and other types of creation, which are usually referred to as works Copyright law protects a wide variety of original works, such as books, magazine, newspapers, photographers, music, films etc It gives an author or creator a bundle of exclusive rights over his/her work for a limited but rather a lengthy period of time

Copyrights and Related rights

The site www.nestle_family.com belongs to Nestl.

Nestl or other third parties who have licensed

Nestls use own the copyright to the contents of this Site. Others may download only material displayed and identified on the Site as specifically available for downloading. Such material is for non-commercial, personal use only, provided they also retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained on the materials.

 People may not, however, distribute, modify,

transmit, reuse, repost or use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes, including the text, images, audio and video without Nestls written permission Nestl respects the intellectual property of others and the users to do the same. Nestl may, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, suspend or terminate the access of and take other action against users, subscribers, registrants and account holders who infringe the copyright rights of others.

What is Trademark
A trademark is a sign which is capable of

distinguishing the goods or services produced or provided by one enterprise from those of other enterprise. Any distinctive words, letters, numerals, drawings, pictures, shapes, colors, logotypes, labels, or combinations which are used to distinguish goods or services are known as trademark. Main function of trademark is to enable consumers to identify a product of a particular company

Trademarks of Nestle
Reg. Trademark of Socit des Produits Nestl S.A.

All rights reserved People are permitted to browse the NESTLEs website, reproduce extracts by way of printing, downloading to a hard disk or for the purposes of distribution to other individuals. This is only to be done on the proviso that they keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices and that the above trademark notice appears on such reproductions. No reproduction of any part of this website may be sold or distributed for commercial gain nor shall it be modified or incorporated in any other work, publication or website.

 The trademarks, logos, characters and service

marks (collectively ""Trademarks"") displayed on this website belong to the Nestl Group
Beverages

 Chocolate, confectionery and biscuits

 Prepared dishes and cooking aids

Water

 Milk products

Petcare

 Ice cream

Pharma

Slogan

Character

Form of product

Shape of Packaging

Patents
A patent consists of a set of exclusive rights granted

by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention. The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must meet the relevant patentability requirements such as novelty and non-obviousness

The patenting process

Patents are primarily used for,
Protection of R&D results Preventing competitors from entering a certain field Avoid being blocked out of a field by third parties Cross-license to get access to third party products

and technologies
Marketing tool
Proof of innovativeness Selected licensing PR.

 The World Intellectual Property Organisation

(WIPO) announced its list of top patent applicants in 2009. Despite the difficult economic climate 0f 2008 year, Nestl continued to invest in R&D and intellectual property and has increased its ranking in the WIPO list Nestl has now entered the top 100 and is the top patent applicant for the food and beverage industry. Leading edge technologies and highly differentiated products, solutions and benefits are key to Nestl's four growth drivers and its global brands such as Nespresso, Nan, Nescaf, Nido and Purina.

 Protecting these

technologies, products, solutions and benefits significantly contributes to sustaining the competitive advantage coming from Nestl's unmatched R&D capability and product and brand portfolio.
To do this, Nestl files over 250 patent applications

per year and manages a global patent portfolio of about 20,000 patents

What is Trade Secret

A trade secret is a formula, practice, process,

design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred to as "confidential information" or "classified information A company can protect its confidential information through non-compete and non-disclosure contracts with its employees (within the constraints of employment law, including only restraint that is reasonable in geographic and time scope).

 The law of protection of confidential information

effectively allows a perpetual monopoly in secret information - it does not expire as would a patent But employees move to other companies, including competitors more often there is no such thing as life-time employment anymore education is similar if not identical in terms of textbooks, handbooks, scientific journals etc. access to information is universal via the internet via internet or on discs etc. huge amounts of information can be transported unnoticed, industrial espionage is growing

Websites and IP addresses

 Domain names are used to identify one or more IP

addresses. For example, the domain name microsoft.com represents about a dozen IP addresses. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. Example, in the URL http://www.pcwebopedia.com/index.html, the domain name is pcwebopedia.com. The website of nestle is www.nestle.in and the domain name is nestle.in

Controversies!

Chocolate war: Kit Kat shape refused trade mark registration

German supermarket chain Aldi successfully

opposed Nestl's application to register the Kit Kat shape as a trade mark. Nestle had sought to register as a trade mark Two and Four [chocolate] bars attached to one another with a thin base". The trade mark is TM No. 822780 for this.

 A delegate of the Registrar of Trade

Marks found that the application related to the functional shape of the Kit Kat rather than its recognisable trade mark. Nestle argued that the Kit Kat shape distinguished the product from other goods in the marketplace Also provided evidence that 77 per cent of consumers associated the generic shape with the Kit Kat product

 Cadbury, standing in opposition submitted details of

fourteen two and four finger chocolate bars which, it claimed, were on the market prior to the application date of Nestl's marks. Cadbury also relied upon the original refusal of the marks during the prosecution stage

 Nestl disputed the relevance of the competing

products relied upon by Cadbury for a variety of reasons. Firstly, some products entered the market after Nestl's marks had been filed. Secondly, other products had been withdrawn or were only available in limited quantities and/or in a limited number of states. Nestl therefore submitted considerable evidence in support of its acquired distinctiveness. The evidence included brand awareness surveys, turnover figures and marketing spend.

Yunnan coffee producer found in violation of Nestl trademark

Yunnan-based coffee producer

Hogood Coffee is playing the victim after government employees confiscated Hogood non-dairy creamer. It was illegally using the "Coffee-Mate" name, which in China is a registered trademark of multinational food and beverage giant Nestl.

 On September 3, around 12,000 bags of Hogood-

produced non-dairy creamer packaged under the name "Coffee-Mate" were seized by Industrial and Commercial Bureau employees in the Panlong district. Panlong officials confirmed the next day that the confiscation was a response to a complaint filed by Nestl. Hogood CEO Xiong Xiangru told reporters after the confiscation that the company had no idea that Coffee-Mate was a trademark despite it being clearly marked as such on all Nestl Coffee-Mate products

 Xiong's denial seems more implausible considering

that Hogood has been a supplier of beans to Nestl, which it grows on farms in Dehong in southern Yunnan. Acknowledging that Nestl was one of the main driving forces behind the development of China's coffee market, Hogood CEO Xiong pleaded to "big brother" Nestl to rescind its Coffee-Mate trademark in order to bring "fair competition" to the Chinese coffee market

Supreme Court rules against Nestle unit on patent

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected two patents on a

method for monitoring a patient's blood to determine the best dosage for a drug, a decision that may affect the profitability of personalized medicine. Supreme court allowed the patents for Nestle SA unit Prometheus, with the high court saying that companies could not patent observations about a natural phenomenon. The Supreme Court's opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, concluded that Prometheus' process for monitoring a patient, and adjusting dosage as needed, could not be patented.

CONCLUSION
The streamlining of the IP Department shed light on

the problems relating to the proliferation of trademarks, and made it possible to formulate a strategy to decide which were worth keeping. It also permitted Nestls IP Department to work more efficiently in their fight against counterfeiting. Nestl colleagues believes that much more can be gained by working with international organizations, such as WIPO and the World Trade Organization (WTO), industry groups and enforcement agencies in countries around the world. This an area that the IP Department aims to develop further.

COMPILED BY: DEEPALI CHOUDHARY (03) MOUSAMI PRASAD (08)