Intellectual Property

“Intellectual property” refers to rights stemming from creative ideas, like inventions, artwork, music, and literature, but also software and distinctive symbols, names, or images that are used in commerce. Intellectual property rights are important in that they strike a balance between the right of creators to profit from their inventions and the right of the public to create new and useful intellectual property. Intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.

What is intellectual property and what does it cover? Intellectual property law facilitates the protection of a wide variety of creative goods, like scientific inventions, books, music, movies, designs, computer chips, secret industrial processes or know-how, and distinctive symbols, names or images that are used to identify the source of products or services in the marketplace.

Intellectual property can be protected by patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Patents give the inventor an exclusive right to exploit his or her novel invention or design for a limited time in exchange for making the invention public. Copyrights protect the original expression of an idea, such as a book, a song, or a film, by giving the creator the right to keep others from copying it for his or her lifetime and 70 years afterward (in most cases). Trademarks protect distinctive marks used by companies in commerce, like a corporate logo. Trade secrets allow companies to protect the secrecy of inventions, know-how, and other proprietary information n. Intellectual property rights do not protect obvious inventions, unoriginal writings or designs, generically descriptive names, or processes that are commonly known.