Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual property law protects different forms of intangible entities. Basically, intellectual property refers to aspects that are products of the human mind or intellect, which become the property of the author. The purpose of the intellectual property law is to protect the exclusive rights to use or reproduce of the intellectual property.

In general, the exclusive rights granted by intellectual property laws can be transferred, licensed, or mortgaged to third parties; however, certain forms of intellectual property rights require registration to fully take effect. Patents, copyrights and trademarks, as well as trade secrets, are often collectively referred to as intellectual property. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is the federal agency that regulates and sets forth the standards for the issuance of patents, trademarks, and copyrights

The international guidelines for intellectual property laws differ worldwide, and in order to acquire, register or enforce intellectual property rights must be pursued or managed individually in every country. The 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is one of the international treaties and conventions that has built standardization in the regulations and assist several forms of registration in between countries.

Intellectual property law is comprised of four main types of intellectual property:

• Copyright – A copyright is an exclusive right for original authorships works. A copyright work entitles the owner exclusive rights which include reproducing, performing in public, and distribution of copies of work in public. The copyright law is regulated to prevent people from using originally authored work. The work must be original and fixed into some tangible medium to receive copyright from the federal law.
• Trademark – Trademark law safeguards consumers by authorizing manufacturers to prevent the use of their names and or symbols through the application of others which could confuse consumers. Trademarks can be a word, phrase, logo or any symbol, utilized to distinguish a product, a product source, and the producer and or the marketer. Provided the name or image is continuously used in business trademark rights can last for a very long time.
• Patent – Patent law is the right granted to inventors to protect their exclusive right to manufacture, distribute, and sell their inventions for a limited time period, given the disclosure of their invention to the public. An invention must be novel, useful, and non-obvious to receive patent protection. There are different types of inventions that can be patented such as utility patent, design patent, and plant patent.
• Trade Secrets – Trade secret law provides protection to any information that is secretly held by commerce, and usually guarded by the owner from public disclosure. There are certain standards to be protected by trade secret law: the information must in fact be secret, and it must have self-sufficient economic value by being a secret.