What is Intellectual Property?
Intellectual property is a group of legislative and common law rights affording protection to creative and intellectual effort. Intellectual property protection covers literary, artistic, and musical works (including computer programs), and inventions, scientific discoveries, industrial designs, trademarks, and trade secrets (confidential information). The four most common forms of intellectual properly are copyright, patent, trade secrets (confidential information), and trademarks.
Intellectual Property (or “IP”) is the term used to cover “intangible assets”, therefore, something owned by an individual or company that does not have a fixed physical form; with the exception of a description or image on paper. The term IP covers a wide range of aspects, including: · Inventions; · trademarks; · brand names; · logos, art and designs; · music, software codes; · confidential information and trade secrets. Many forms of IP rights are registerable. Such rights include: · Patents for inventions; · design registrations; · trademark registrations. The exception is the area is copyright. Areas of copyright include creative designs and common law rights within the area of trademarks. More recently copyright can be applied to software also.
Intellectual property refers to the rights one has in the product of one’s intellect. This includes copyright (rights in creative expression)and patents (rights in inventions, discoveries, methods, compositions of matter, etc.) which are granted by article I, section 8 clause 8 of the US Constitution which gives Congress the power to “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Related rights include trademark (rights in the names one uses to identify one’s goods and services), trade secret (confidential business practices), unfair trade practice, passing off, trade libel, false advertising, misappropriation. Laws protecting most of these rights exist at both the state and federal level. “Proprietary rights” is just a general term meaning “one’s own rights.
