December 26, 2024 Copyright ©️ 2024 by goldkeen International Patent & Trademark Joint Office
Patents may sound complicated, but to everyone’s surprise, a Taiwanese starfruit drink brand successfully obtained a design patent for its food truck!
For franchise headquarters looking to plan their intellectual property strategy, three types of IP protection are most commonly encountered:
- Patents – These typically protect technical processes, structural innovations, or product designs.
- Trademarks – These protect brand identifiers, such as names (in Chinese or English), logos, or even sounds.
- Copyrights – These are automatically granted upon creation; the Intellectual Property Office does not issue certificates.
Take this example of an invention patent:
The well-known mochi factory “Jia Hui Xiang” in Nantou obtained patent I308062, titled:
“Multi-layered Soft Rice Food and Its Manufacturing Method.”
This patent protects the special functional product and its production process. It was filed in 2006 and is still active!
So yes, even soft foods can be patented—
What matters is convincing the examiner that your process or structure meets the three key requirements of a patent:
- Novelty – It hasn’t been made public before.
- Inventiveness – It isn’t something easily achieved by someone in the field.
- Industrial applicability – It can be manufactured and used practically.
In short: it must be new, non-obvious, and workable.
Back to the food truck design patent—
If the franchise headquarters successfully registers the design,
other food truck operators cannot replicate or imitate that unique look.
The franchisor can also license the design and charge extra for its use—
a win on all fronts!
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