Which payments we accept

So far we can take payments from Paypal and Google Checkout. You can still pay using credit cards and other forms of electronic payments.

What is intellectual property?

Intellectual property (IP) can allow you to own things you create in a similar way to owning physical property. You can control the use of your IP, and use it to gain reward. This encourages further innovation and creativity.

Registered designs

A registered design gives you a monopoly right for the look of a product, protecting both the shape and the pattern or decoration. A registered design will cover the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and materials of the product or its ornamentation. To be registered, a design must:

• be new
• have individual character; meaning, it should not remind an informed person of an existing design.

If your design meets these requirements, you may want to consider applying for a registered design. If you have a registered design, you must renew it every 5 years for up to 25 years.

What is Design Right?

Design right gives you free automatic protection for the internal or external shape or configuration of an original design. Design right allows you to stop anyone from copying the shape or configuration of the product, but does not give you protection for any of the 2-dimensional aspects, for example patterns. You can protect 2-dimensional designs using copyright or registered designs. Design right lasts either 10 years after the first marketing of products that use the design or 15 years after creation of the design, whichever is earlier. For the first 5 years you can stop anyone from copying the design. For the rest of the time the design is subject to a license of right. This means that anyone is entitled to a licence to make and sell products copying the design. Your design right will only give you protection in the United Kingdom

What is Hosting?

Hosting (also known as Web site hosting, Web hosting, and Webhosting) is the business of housing, serving, and maintaining files for one or more Web sites.

More important than the computer space that is provided for Web site files is the fast connection to the Internet. Most hosting services offer connections on T-carrier system lines. Typically, an individual business hosting its own site would require a similar connection and it would be expensive.

Using a hosting service lets many companies share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files.

What is a Domain?

Domain names is essentially an address on the Internet. Most computers connected to the Internet are identified by a unique number called an IP address (for instance, 192.168.0.1). IP addresses are neither intuitive (they don't correspond to a geographical location) nor easy to remember.)

If you type the IP address into the URL bar of your browser you will be taken to the web site it relates to. As well as being hard to remember, however, IP addresses are also FIXED (i.e. if you change web hosting companies you'll need to get a new IP address for your site).

Domain names offer a more intuitive way to name and find a website. Each domain name replaces a string of meaningless numbers (an IP address) with a simple word or expression. That's the theory - in practice, domain names can be pretty obscure too.