What is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual property rights are rights over a person’s ideas and other creations of the mind. Thus, anything original created by a person belongs to that person. The creations can be artistic or commercial. Some of these subjects include works of music, literature and art, as well as a person’s ideas, inventions, discoveries, words, phrases, symbols and designs. Intellectual property types are copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets.

Some of these intellectual property rights provide the creator(s) (if the work is original) a type of temporary monopoly, encouraging individual development of ideas and the sharing of those developed ideas.

Industrial design rights may provide protection to the creator of, say, an emblem. These rights protect appearance, style and design. Trade secrets are not for public disclosure and protect commercial practices and/or proprietary knowledge of a business. For example, the secret formula of Coca Cola is considered a trade secret. Businesses can enforce trade secrets through non-compete agreements and non-disclosure contracts.