The Intellectual Property Rights Protection of Service Concepts

Services and service innovation are significant for the global economy as the future’s hope of economic growth lies in innovative service business. The current IP legislation offers limited law-based means of protection of service concepts. Thus, my thesis aims to provide insights into how service concepts can be protected de lege lata by trademarks, copyright and unfair business practices legislation, and explore what other means of protection exist for service concepts outside the legislation. I also discuss the de lege ferenda possibility to protect service concepts by business method patents. Because of the similarities and the same existing ambiguity of the non-legal terms ‘concept’ and ‘format’, the debate about the copyright protection of TV formats is also of interest.