Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property refers to a broad umbrella of property rights relating to inventions, works of art and other creative expressions.   IP includes patents, trade secrets, trademarks, industrial design and geographic origin designations (i.e. Champagne) and copyright. 

Patents Patents are legally enforceable property rights granted by a government to a patentee (the inventor or assignee) in exchange for public disclosure of an invention (i.e. apparatus, method, substance etc.) which meets all of the requirements for patentability. Patents grant the patentee a monopolistic right to exclude others from practicing the claimed invention for a set period of time (usually 20 years). It is important to note that a patent does not necessarily grant the patentee the right to use, make, sell or import the invention but rather grants the patentee the right to exclude others from doing so.

Trademarks are words, phrases, symbols, designs or combinations thereof that identify and distinguish the source of goods of one party from those of others.  A Service Mark is the same as a trademark, except that it identifies the source of a service rather than a product.  Generally trademarks refer to both trademarks and service marks.

Copyright protects original works of art or authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works. Copyright protection gives the owner the right to: reproduce or copy the work, prepare derivative works based upon the protected work, distribute copies of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending, to perform the work publicly, and to display the work.

Trade Secret is any valuable information that is not generally known and is subject to reasonable efforts to protect its secrecy.  Trade Secrets protect against misappropriation of the protected information by improper means.