Leighton UK Business Information

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Millions and millions of people all across the world smoke cigarettes for one reason or another. They are highly addictive and extremely dangerous to one?s health. Yet with all the known negative effects, cigarettes are one of the most bought products in the market today. This is a terrible thing for non-smokers because second hand smoke can be just as deadly as smoking the cigarettes themselves. This is why many states and countries have banned smoking cigarettes in public places to help safeguard civilians who don?t smoke. The latest place to ban smoking in public places is in the United Kingdom.

In July of 2007, England banned smoking in public places with the “Smoke Free England” campaign. Second hand smoke causes numerous diseases such as heart disease, lung cancer, and SIDS. It really is unfair to those nonsmokers who are trying to stay safe from the effects of cigarettes when people smoke around them. This campaign is driven by the Health Department to keep these innocent people safe. While the campaign is being enforced, many businesses and public places are being slightly affected by this new ban.

For those people that smoke, it is a luxury to be able to go to a restaurant and smoke while enjoying a meal. This is no longer allowed in open spaces. Businesses such as restaurant, bars, and cafe?s are losing business because the people that use to come to these places who smoke no longer come. This in turn leads to loss of productivity as far as annual revenue. These businesses who are losing money right now will rebound though. With the ban of smoking in these locations, more non smokers are beginning to fill these spots, thus making up for the people who use to come that smoked.

All is not lost for people who smoke cigarettes however. There are still designated areas where people can smoke while still being in public. The Health Department has set up what is called smoking shelters where people are allowed to smoke. Many of these areas are set up with chairs and tables. Although many businesses will be able to recover from the “Smoke Free England” campaign, many UK businesses are not. This is why the Health Department set up the designated smoking areas to help businesses who lost a substantial amount of business. For companies who were badly affected by the ban, they are able to attach these smoking shelters in order to keep some of their regular customers.

There are a few different types of shelters a business owner can choose from to accommodate their customers. The most popular designated smoking spot would be the “Free Standing Smoking Shelter.” This is usually a spot connected to the place of business, where five to seven people can comfortably enjoy a cigarette. Another type of shelter is the economical friendly “Wall Mounted Smoking Shelter.” This is basically a makeshift barrier between the business and the smoking area. The only requirement for this is that no more than fifty percent of the smoke infiltrates the company. Lastly there are smoking shelters that can be custom built. For example, a business owner can build an entire separate room with tables and chairs so customers can conveniently smoke. Regardless of what type of smoking shelter it is, the shelter itself can help a business retain their customers.

The United Kingdom is again the latest place to enforce this ban on smoking in public places. The public places that are the most effected by this is restaurant and bars. For those people who used to enjoy going out to the bar and smoking and having a good time can no longer do this. This ban is set to help improve people?s safety. Many people are considered social smokers, so with this “Smoke Free England ” campaign, the Health Department is hoping that some of these casual smokers will quit altogether. With less people that smoke, the fewer amount of people that will be affected by this ban. This in turn leads to businesses being less affected as well. The whole idea of this smoke free concept is to detour people away from the deadly addiction and help protect those from the people that just can?t quit.

Smoking cigarettes and second hand smoke is one of the biggest causes of people?s death every year. The worst part about them is what is called “Nicotine.” Nicotine is super addictive and very deadly. When an individual smokes a lot, their body develops a dependency to this said substance, which becomes harder to break overtime. This it turn leads to a countless list of medical dangers that can eventually lead to one?s demise. The same can be said with second hand smoke. After inhaling enough of it overtime, one can be so badly damaged by it, a whole crop of disease can pop up leading to an untimely death. The smoke free ban is being enforced to reduce this occurrence.
So when the “Smoke Free England” campaign launched and began to be enforced in July of 2007, a number of things began to happen. Many businesses were affected both in good ways and in bad ways. For those companies who took the biggest hit, the Health Department came up with an idea about the smoking shelters. This allows places like restaurant and bars to still accommodate those people who smoke while not breaking any new laws about smoking in public places. Those other businesses that were only mildly affected by the ban, will recover because more non smoking people will make up for the absence of the people that use to come and smoke. In addition, both adults and children are able to go out and enjoy themselves in an environment not deadly to their health. Hopefully for those social smokers, they will just quit entirely because of they will not have the urge to smoke while being out. The “Smoke Free England” campaign is now being enforced and is now beginning to have countless positive affects in a number of different ways.

The starting point in evaluating whether an idea is protectable is to understand that there is no abstract right in law to prevent competition, or to protect an idea. The courts and governments of the day for centuries have supported competition between rival traders and have been reluctant develop laws encroach on a freedom to compete. Ideas may be protected to the extent that they fall under the relevant areas of law, the primary area being intellectual property law.

Confidential Information

Confidential information is a well established area of law that that protects ideas and information regardless of its form (whether spoken, or in a recorded form such as electronically or on paper), provided that the confidentiality of the information is maintained. The law of confidentiality plays a part in other areas of law. For instance, that a disclosure of particular information at a relevant time completely dissolves the right to obtain patent protection.

There are traps for the unwary when dealing with business ideas. When entrepreneurs are looking to disclose sensitive information, they should enter into a non-disclosure agreement prior to any disclosure to at least enshrine the terms of the disclosure in writing. To be legally enforceable, the agreement must be properly drafted and ideally lay out some background to the circumstances of the disclosure, so that if worse comes to worst there is some documentary evidence of the disclosure and what it related to. This does not mean that the information itself should be disclosed in the non-disclosure agreement, but rather the circumstances and general subject matter of the disclosure. If the company or person to whom the idea is to be disclosed is reluctant to enter into a non-disclosure agreement, then the business idea should probably not be disclosed to them in the first place. It would not be the first time that a company says after the disclosure that they are “already working on something” similar. A well drafted NDA will cater for this contingency.

When a business idea has been implemented and trading commenced, it will of course lose its confidentiality and fall into the public domain. At this point (and in keeping with our comments about rival traders at the outset of this brochure) there is nothing preventing any other company from copying the essence of business idea and altering it or improving it and by doing so creating a competing product or service – subject to the following. If parts of the business idea can be protected by intellectual property rights, then competitors will not be able to copy the business idea to the extent that the intellectual property rights protect the idea.

Overview of intellectual property rights

Each of the different intellectual property rights serves a different purpose. They all apply independently – if subject matter qualifies for protection under more than one type of intellectual property protection, then the rights associated with the particular intellectual property right may be enforced independently of the others. No one IP rights serves all purposes, and the best right depends on what the business idea is and how the business wants to use it.

Loosely speaking, copyright protects written and recorded material from copying; registered trade mark law protects business names and logos from being used by other businesses; patent law protects truly innovative products and processes from being copied or offered for sale; the law of passing off protects established reputation in a business from being exploited by others; the law of confidential information and that of trade secrets protect information from disclosure or misuse provided it remains secret. Lastly, designs law primarily protects the aesthetic features of a design as it is applied to a product. There are different tests for infringement in each case.

So, if a logo is created that is intended to be used to identify a business, it may qualify for trade mark protection. It will also qualify for protection from passing off. If the logo is an artistic work, it will also qualify for copyright protection and protection as a registered design. Likewise, if a design has been created it may be registered as a design, the unregistered design right may also protect it, and if it is to be used as a trade mark, it may qualify for registered trade mark protection as a shape, and protection from passing off if it has accrued the requisite goodwill for the business.

It is important to realise the intellectual property rights are territorial. For instance, there is no such thing as a worldwide patent or trade mark. A reference to a worldwide patent usually means that registered patent protection has been obtained in many individual countries or ‘territories’. With trade marks, there is an important exception where a single trade mark may be obtained covering all of the countries in Europe (except Switzerland) with a single application.

Individual Areas of Intellectual Property Protection to Business Ideas

Copyright Law This area of Copyright law is said to protect the fine arts, whereas patent law protects the industrial arts. Copyright protects materials in their recorded form whether it be art, photographs, graphic works, music as a embodiment of a business idea. Copyright will not against someone reading the written work, extracting the concepts from it and implementing their own version of it, provided they do not copy the way it is expressed. It will protect against someone copying the materials that they read word for word. It does not protect against someone extracting the ideas from the document and using them for their own purposes.

Patent Protection and Business Ideas Some people say that patents protect ideas. They say this on the basis that at the time the patent application is filed you do not need an existing invention, because the patent invention only needs to be produced when the application proceeds to examination, about 9 months after the application is made. Strictly speaking, patents do not protect ideas – it protects products and processes that have been invented, that has not been seen before and contains an advance over what existed in the market at the date of the application.

The UK and Europe do not allow protection for pure business methods (amongst others). This contrasts with US patent protection that does allow for protection of methods of doing business. A good example is the “One-Click” purchasing method used at amazon.com – it is patentable in the US, but not in Europe.

Design Rights Design protects the appearance of a product brought about by its shape, contours, ornamentation and surface decoration. There are exceptions to these rules. Nevertheless if the design is new and has an individual character, it may be registered for protection. The unregistered design right applies automatically in the same way as copyright and has some similar characteristics.

Trade Marks If the business idea is the name of a business or a logo, it may be registered as a trade mark. A trade mark is simply a name or symbol that indicates that goods or services originate from a source associated with the trade mark. For instance, if Google were to produce a mobile telephone with word ‘Google’ applied to it, you know that the Google, Inc had a hand in producing it. Trade marks do play a role in the promotion of a business idea, because it allows the business to associate the business idea when it goes to market with a distinctive name, which is readily differentiated in the market.

Contracts Contracts, when properly prepared, are simply agreements in a legally binding form. Contracts may be verbal or they may be written. In a commercial context, there is real difficulty in proving what the terms of a verbal agreement are. It is commonly said that contracts are not required unless things go wrong. The problem with this approach is that when a value judgment is made at the outset of transaction that all will go well, there is no decisive written record of what was actually agreed, which makes enforcement of the contract more difficult and in our opinion, for most cases too risky to try.

When dealing with intellectual property rights, some transactions dealing with intellectual property must be in writing, such as transfers of ownership and grants of exclusive licenses.

Furthermore, contracts with employees may be drafted with a view to preventing competition from employees and freelancers when they leave finish their engagement with their employer

Conclusion

The focus of this article has been the application of intellectual property rights and contracts may used to protect a business idea and their limitations. Intellectual property rights and contracts may be tailored to maximise the level of protection that is available by law for a particular business idea in the circumstances that it is intended to be used. The way this is done for any particular business idea relies on the nature of the business idea and its origins.

By not taking measures at the outset, you run the risk of losing rights that may otherwise have been enforceable and in the process, compromising or losing a powerful negotiating position in the event of infringement of legal rights that you otherwise might have had.

I intend to share my encounter in particular to those fiancee visa applicants.

I initially met my fiancee in the UK online through Yahoo Chat. He, then, visited me after 6 months. Before that, we were already contemplating on applying for a visa as we were honestly and wildly in love, we could feel a fantastic future as one. We prepared enough despite the fact that our relationship was only 9 months old by the time we applied. After 1 month and a week, the UK Embassy scheduled me for an 8:00 am interview.

Here’s the list of papers we submitted:

IDENTIFICATION:
Passport, NBI Clearance, NSO-SECPA Birth Certificate
Sponsor’s Birth Certificate
Full copy of sponsor’s passport, personal information.
Scanned photocopy of sponsor’s driver’s certificate

EVIDENCE OF ACCOMMODATION:
Deed of Property
Property Details (highlighted our sole use of the room)
Mortgage Statements: Year 2007 and Year 2008
Letter of No Objection from the mutual landlord

EVIDENCE OF FINANCIAL CAPACITY:
Payslips
P60 end of Year Certificate
Letter of Employment, Copy of Full Contract Details, Calling cards
Bank Statements
Letter of Claim Payment for the policy surrendered
Natwest Surrender Value Illustration
Transaction Details: E-Savings Account

EVIDENCE OF RELATIONSHIP:
Letter of Support from the Sponsor
Provisional Booking for the Wedding
Provisional Booking for Wedding Lunch
E-mail Transcripts
Chat Logs
SMS Log
Screenshots of Chat Sessions
MoneyGram Receipts
Flower Receipts
Telephone Bills

EVIDENCE OF ENCOUNTER:
Boarding Passes and E-tickets, Hotel and Restaurant Receipts, Photos
Letters, Postcard, Used Phone Cards, Used Call and Text Cards

Extra supporting document:
Birth Certificates of Sponsor’s Dependants

Lastly, I gave these additional docs during the day of interview:

I also included an email from his kids that will show they acknowledge me as their step-mum.

MY ADVICE/TIPS:

The day prior to your interview, take time to get to know where the embassy is. Study the area around it. I didn’t know that it’s not acceptable to just stay anywhere in the area. It’s in a financial/business neighborhood so every stranger is considered a “threat”.

Before you go to interview, relax your mind and body with a protracted soak in the tub, it eases the tensions you have. Be comfortable, wear something semi-casual, that is a blouse and slacks/skirt. I arrived there at 7.30, I wasn’t permitted to hang around and the guard instructed me to come back at 7.50 and go somewhere. I think it was Mini-Stop where you can kill time and eat something. By the way, guards don’t pity you even if it’s showery outside. You can’t go to the shed of the underpass and linger there. A guard will advise you not to hang around, they are suspicious of just anyone. A police guy will go up with you to the 15th floor once you are called for interview.

Opt to be interviewed in English. It’s a big plus. A lot of applicants want to have an interpreter though they understand the language well. Be confident and constant with your answers. Some questions may be repeated in a different way. You may be distracted with the look of the ECO but please sustain eye contact.

I found out they wear very casual clothes. Well I was expecting they would wear a suit so I was astounded but then I felt comfortable right from the beginning. There are only 4 interview rooms, don’t chat too much with the others while you wait because the ECO will just call up your name anytime. Between you and the ECO is a glass barrier, don’t be scared to say if you can’t hear well because he/she will modify the volume for you. Also, don’t be frightened to ask the ECO to reiterate the question if it’s not clear to you.

Some questions that were asked from me:
Why do you desire to go to UK?
When and where did you first get together and in person
When and where will the marriage take place
What does he do, what do I do
When is his birthday

The ECO will be taking notes on the computer, typing as you talk and sometimes ask another question while he/she types your answer. So be very attentive even if he doesn’t look at you.

When you are told to wait outside, do so with much patience. Some were given a distinct time to go back and some were not. In my case, I was waiting for like forever there. I figured out, they normally discuss your application inside once you are done with the interview process. It’s like the ECO or/and assistants will hold consultation inside whether you are permitted for an entry to UK or not.

There are hidden cameras in the embassy. Behave yourself even if you are waiting for long. I felt like they observe everything once you are inside, your look, facial expressions, gestures and behaviour count during and after the interview. Think of it as if the interview doesn’t end there. A lot of applicants there were impatient of the results.

There were many refusals that day, mostly family/visit visa. I guessed I was the only one for fiancee visa. So, I was blessed somehow that mine was not the same and the long wait was all worth it, they gave me the visa that day. You’ll know you are denied if there’s a white paper (refusal letter, appeal form) along with your passport.

I hope you find this useful.