The list of various types of legal monopolies over creations of mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law is called Intellectual property (IP). Under intellectual property law, owners have exclusive rights to some intangible assets like musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, breakthroughs, and inventions; and words. phrases, symbols, and designs. Copyrights, trademarks, patents and trade secrets are four main kinds of intellectual property.
Copyrights safeguard original works, either published or unpublished. They protect the owner’s rights over pieces like musical scores, poetry, movies, novels etc. They allow the owners to exclusively use various forms of their idea in different mediums with sole legal rights of replication, adaptation, sale etc for a prescribed period of time. The owner has an authority over his creation for more than 50 years, which remains even after his death and any infringement of the creation within this period is treated as an offence.
Patents are legal and registered rights that allow inventors to prevent others from manufacturing or promoting their invention. Typically they are applicable to scientific theories, technological inventions and even biological discoveries. In most countries, patent protection is available for a restricted span of 20 years and the owner loses his sole ownership over the invention after the expiry of this time span.
Trade secrets are proprietary ideas and information that can be used by the company to stand out in the industry. Trade secrets can be anything ranging from software algorithms to the recipe of a particular dish and even information like contacts of most important clients. Usually, trade secrets are an internal matter and are strongly guarded by the firm without any intervention from a government agency. The common measures taken by a company to protect trade secrets include confining the information to a select handful of executives, or even keeping it under lock and key in some bank vault.
Trademarks, on the other hand, are words, designs or logos that are associated with the firm on the whole or its products, which act as identifiers of its brand. Trademarks act as a quick recall of the manufacturer in the consumer’s mind and create a particular brand identity. Usually trademarks hold good for 10 years after which a renewal is often necessary.
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