HOW CAN YOU PROTECT YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN HUNGARY?

27 February 2024

In case you are doing business in Hungary, you must know how to efficiently protect the valuable intellectual property of your company. In our short article we summarize what type of intellectual work can be protected and which legal protection require registration procedure before the Hungarian authorities

1. Copyright

When talking about IP protection, we must start with copyright, since this right automatically protects a wide range of literary, scientific and artistic creations, without any registration process. The main requirement is that the creation shall have individual and original nature deriving from the intellectual activity of the author. If this criterion is met, many forms of creations may enjoy copyright protection, including, but not limited to:

 

literary works	software	musical works
drawing, painting, photographic works	architectural works and plans	designs

However, ideas, principles, theories, procedures, operating methods and mathematical operations shall not be the subject matter of copyright protection.

In general, the author of the copyright protected work has the right to authorize the use of his/her work, and in case of unauthorized use, the author can start lawsuit to, amongst other remedies, prohibit the infringer from further infringement and pay monetary compensation to the author.

2. Trademark

Trademark protection is an effective method to protect your company’s brand, for example

business name	logo	slogan
other signs	trade dress, shapes	designs

Trademark protection may be granted for any signs, provided that these are capable of distinguishing goods or services from the goods or services of others; and can be represented in the trade mark register in a manner which enables the authorities and the public to clearly and precisely determine the subject matter of the protection applied for or granted to its holder.

An advantage of the trademark protection is that the protection and the violation can be clearly established based on a publicly available register. To appear in the public registry, you must register your trademark, which is a small price to be paid for an effective legal protection.

Important to note that trademark protection basically works within pre-determined groups of products and services. For example, if you have a food brand, you can protect your name or logo in the category of foods, so food companies may not use a similar name, however, a car manufacturer may be able to use a similar name without infringing your trademark.

3. Patent

The patent ensures legal protection of inventions by granting a better position to the owner of invention compared with that of rivals in the market of products and technology.

The owner of invention has an exclusive right to exploit the solution of invention, but the period and the territorial validity of patent protection are not unlimited. The patent protection is valid up to 20 years started from the day on that the patent application was filed and solely in the countries where the protection was granted.

Hungarian patent may be obtained by national or European application.

4. Remedy against passing-off

If one business has distinguishing or easily recognisable products or services with significant goodwill, another business cannot mimic them in an attempt to pass them off as their own. There are several possible remedies available if this happens, including the prohibition of the infringer from further infringement and reimbursement of financial gains resulting from the infringement.

Thus, in case your company has a unique product or service that is widely known by customers, and someone is copying it, you may be protected by Hungarian competition law without any prior registration procedure.

5. Civil law protection

The rights mentioned previously can be enforced against anyone who is infringing your protected intellectual property. However, in many cases, the person violating your intellectual assets, including your IP, know-how and confidential information are not a stranger, but your employee or client, especially if the business relationship did not end well.

Fortunately, your company has an additional option for legal protection in relation to contractual partners. It is recommended to prepare in advance and insert clauses in the contracts that prevent infringement of intellectual property rights, or at least reduce the risk of infringement, for example by stipulating a penalty. A well-drafted contract can save you from legal proceedings, so spending on this is certainly not a waste of money.

In our short article we summarized the most common methods for protecting your IP, brand and confidential business information in Hungary. In case you want to protect your IP from infringement, we recommend contacting a legal expert who has expertise in the field of intellectual property.