What is Intellectual Property?
The concept of intellectual property, or IP, treats certain non-physical (intangible) products similarly to physical things. The four main types of non-physical things considered by this point of view are copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. Common types of intellectual property rights include conflicting areas of law:
What are Intellectual Property Rights?
IP rights are generally divided into two categories: those that grant exclusive rights only on copying/reproduction of the item or act protected (e.g. copyright) and those that grant not only this but also other exclusive rights. The difference between these is that a copyright would prevent someone from copying the design of something, but could not stop them from making that design if they had no knowledge of the original held by the copyright holder. A patent, on the other hand, can be used to prevent that second person from making the same design even if they had never heard of or seen the original. Patent rights can thus be more powerful, and generally harder to obtain and more expensive to enforce.
Patents
A patent is a right granted by a national government, such as the United States Government, to the inventor (or owner) to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing an invention. Most countries, like the United States, will issue patents giving patent owners rights effective only within their territorial limits (e.g., U.S. patents are effective only in the United States and its territories). Under U.S. law for utility patents, this exclusionary right now lasts for twenty (20) years from the date of filing a patent application on the invention. In return for this right, the inventor gives the public a description of the invention and how it is made and used.
Some intangible assets include ideas that may be incorporated into devices, structure, machinery, business process, or other things. For example, if an idea is for a machine or a method or process of doing something, and if the idea is "new," the company may be able to protect it by obtaining a patent. A U.S. patent is a powerful business and legal competitive tool that allows the patentee to exclude others from making, using, or selling its inventions for up to twenty (20) years in the United States. A patent also provides a means for a patentee to license others to make, use, or sell the item covered by the patent. A patent in each foreign country is required to obtain similar protection in that country.
Copyrights
A copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights granted by the United States Government and under international treaties to authors of literary, audiovisual, musical, artistic works, and the like. It protects only the expression (the selection and ordering of words, sounds, shapes, colors, and so on), not the underlying concepts, ideas, or processes (which may be protected as proprietary, confidential and/or trade secret information). Copyright owners have the right to exclude others from reproducing, publicly distributing, publicly displaying or publicly performing the work, or producing derivative works. Note that not all "public" performances need be open to the public to be protected.
Intangible assets that may be legally protected as a copyright include "works of authorship." Under the current copyright laws, works of authorship are protected from the moment of creation; that is, when they are “fixed in a tangible medium of expression”.
For example, Copyright can subsist in data, documents, drawings, manuals, software, paintings, music, text, images, designs, and other works of authorship. Copyright rights give the owner the sole right to copy, display publicly, perform publicly, distribute, and make derivative works of, the work and to prevent others from doing so. While necessary or prudent under certain circumstances, no registration or copyright legend is necessary to claim or preserve a legally enforceable copyright. Therefore, it is advisable to presume that all works of authorship are protected under copyright law even if no copyright markings are placed on the work.
Unlike patents, copyright law protects only the specific, concrete, expression by which the author's ideas appear, not the substance of the idea or the information revealed in the author's work. Accordingly, it is sometimes possible to acquire both patent protection for the idea and copyright protection for the expression of the idea
Trademarks
Trademarks and service marks serve to identify the source and quality of goods or services and symbolize a company's reputation and image. One purpose of trademark (and service mark) law is to protect the consumer from confusion as to the source of goods or services; another is to protect the property rights and investment of trademark (and service mark) owners.
Trademarks and service marks ("marks") are important intangible assets and must be protected just as rigorously as real property. A trademark is a word, a symbol, or a device that is used by a company to distinguish its goods or services from those of others. Examples of company marks include "Netscape" and "NBC". Logos and drawings may also function as marks. Examples include the McDonald double arches and Apple Computer's 'apple' symbol. A company's marks are a promise and symbolize in the minds of consumers the goodwill that a business has built, as well as the quality of a product or service that they are buying. To a company, its marks play an important role in marketing its products and services.
Licensing
Licensing in the Intellectual Property (IP) arena can be considered the granting of IP rights to another party (licensee) in order to enter into a market. It generally takes the form of providing the right to use a manufacturing process, trademark, patent, trade secret, or other item of value for a fee or royalty. It can be a contractual agreement granting permission to use intellectual property under specific conditions. Licensing agreements, in which one company contracts to buy technology from another company, can be much faster, easier and cheaper to arrange than trying to challenge an intellectual property claim in court.
Licenses can last a very long time. Therefore it is critical to carefully consider numerous factors prior to entering into such agreements.
Assignment
There are many kinds of assignments but generally it can be viewed as an agreement to transfer a security from one owner to another. Patents, for example, are viewed as personal property and can therefore be sold as such.