Protecting Creative Advertising Ideas And Projects - The Italian Approach

The advertising industry frequently has to deal with the problem of how to protect concepts, ideas, projects, claims or slogans prepared for campaign pitches or client evaluation. What can agencies and practitioners active in the advertising industry do in order to achieve some level of protection for their 'creative work'?

In Italy a specific ethics code adopted by the local self-regulation industry¹ provides for a deposit procedure² with the aim of granting protection to: (a) creative projects, prepared for tenders, pitches or selections performed by advertisers in order to assign advertising budgets (the protections covers a three years period from the moment of filing and applies to proposals not selected or rejected), (b) advertising ideas conceived in anticipation of a planned ad campaign (the protection refers to specific, isolated messages – i. e. slogans, payoffs, tag lines - and lasts for eighteen months), and (c) marketing communication performed abroad