What are some of the differences between patents and other types of intellectual property?
The different types of intellectual property—patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks—have different purposes, different strengths and different weaknesses. In many cases, a proper strategy for protecting a new product line will involve several different types of intellectual property. Sunstein is well suited to consider and implement such a strategy, since our attorneys are familiar with all these areas. A patent is generally considered to be the strongest way to protect an invention—assuming that a patent with broad coverage can be obtained for the invention. A patent is frequently the only way to protect an invention adequately. In many cases, trade secret protection is impossible or impractical, because of the nature of the invention (e.g., the invention is mass marketed and can be reverse engineered), or because of other circumstances (e.g., the engineers move freely among competitors in the industry). A copyright is not supposed to protect an idea, only the expression of
