Beginner's Guide to Intellectual Property (IP)
For those of you entering the Big Business Idea Competition - Intellectual Property (IP) issues will certainly be on your agenda. With this in mind, we've decided to include a short introduction on what IP is all about. At the bottom of this short section you'll find links to various IP sites and these should answer any of the queries you have. In the beginning..........the US legal system developed the concept of intellectual property (IP) to encourage the creation of valuable ideas and protect them from being stolen.
In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, IP refers to a legal authorization which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other abstract subject matter. In general terms this legal authorization sometimes enables its holder to exercise exclusive control over the use of the IP. The term IP reflects the idea that the subject matter of this property is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that once established; such authorizations are generally treated as equivalent to physical property and may be enforced as such by the courts. Various schools of thought are critical of the concept of IP, some of which characterize it as intellectual protectionism.
According to Article 2, section (viii), of the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, signed in Stockholm, 14 July 1967: "intellectual property" shall include the rights relating to: literary, artistic and scientific works, performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts, inventions in all fields of human endeavour, scientific discoveries, industrial designs, trademarks, service marks, and commercial names and designations, protection against unfair competition, and all other rights resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields.
IP is a creation of the intellect that has commercial value. It includes copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and ideological property, such as patents, titles of origin, business methods, as well as industrial processes. Intellectual property is a term often used to refer generically to property rights created through intellectual and/or discovery efforts of a creator that are generally protectable under patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, trade dress or other law.
Common types of IP rights protect different types of abstract subject matter. In brief, the 5 main types of non-physical things considered to comprise IP are:
1. Copyright/©: A copyright protects original works of authorship fixed in a physical medium of expression. Copyrights can include published and unpublished works—literary, dramatic, and musical and dance compositions, films, photographs, audiovisual works, paintings, sculpture, and other visual works of art, as well as computer programs—from being copied.
2. Patent: A patent is a grant issued by the federal government giving an inventor the right to exclude others from making, having made, using, leasing, offering to sell, selling, or importing an invention in the United States. A patent does not necessarily guarantee inventors the right to make, use or sell their inventions; in some cases, utilizing a patented invention depends on another person's prior, unexplored patent.
3. Trademark/™ ®: Trademark protection covers a non-functional word, logo, slogan, symbol, design — or any combination of these—that distinguishes a product or service. Essentially trademarks are the brand names that promote competition by giving products corporate identity and marketing leverage.
4. Trade Secret: A trade secret is a formula, pattern, manufacturing process, method of doing business, or technical know-how that gives its owner a competitive advantage. Trade secrets cover a wide range of information, including chemical compounds, machine patterns, customer lists and software.
5. Designs: IP of design refers to the form of appearance, style or design of an industrial object, for example furniture or textiles.
