Without adequate IP protection, innovators are unable to attract investments, business creation is slowed and jobs lost. Evidence suggests that this same story plays out, albeit with differing dynamics, across all sorts of firms and all nations.

Intellectual Property law deals with laws to protect and enforce rights of the creators and owners of inventions, writing, music, designs and other works, known as the “intellectual property.” There are several areas of intellectual property including copyright, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.

The purpose of intellectual property law is to create a framework that incentivizes value creation—specifically, development of new ideas and inventions—while also providing for public access to the good or service.

The most common type of intellectual property dispute is that of infringement. This is where intellectual property is used or appropriated without the owner’s permission by another. Infringement can apply to many categories of intellectual property….

Here are five different ways to protect your intellectual property.

1. Register copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
2. Register business, product or domain names.
3. Create confidentiality, non-disclosure or licensing contracts for employees and partners.
4. Implement security measures.
5. Avoid joint ownership.

Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks, and Trade Secrets – Four Types of Intellectual Properties….

According to the Patents Act, an invention cannot only constitute:

• a discovery, scientific theory or mathematical method,
• an aesthetic creation,
• a scheme, rule or method for performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business, or a computer program,
• a presentation of information,

Advantages of Intellectual Property Rights Provides exclusive rights to the creators or inventors. Encourages individuals to distribute and share information and data instead of keeping it confidential. Provides legal defense and offers the creators the incentive of their work.

Building respect for IP means helping create an environment in which IP can fulfill its role to stimulate innovation and creation. It also means fostering an environment in which the system of protection provides equitable benefits for both owners and users of IP.

Examples of intellectual property include an author’s copyright on a book or article, a distinctive logo design representing a soft drink company and its products, unique design elements of a web site, or a patent on a particular process to, for example, manufacture chewing gum.

A copyright gives the creator of a work the exclusive right to reproduce the work and sell it for profit. Copyright protection can be beneficial to those who produce creative works, but they can also have some negative effects on small businesses.

(1) Copyright laws don’t actually serve their intended purpose of “helping” the public. (3) The laws are so complicated and unclear that they can be easily abused by companies with access to lawyers. (4) It’s too complicated and expensive for individual artists to actually enforce the rights that the law gives them….

Although copyright law grants protections and rights to copyright holders, the system is far from perfect.

• Pro: Automatic Copyright Protection.
• Con: Registration and Fees.
• Pro: Defends Intellecutal Property Rights.
• Con: Expensive for Owners to Enforce.
• Pro: Immediate Action.
• Con: Ambiguity.

Copyright is a legal means of protecting an author’s work. It is a type of intellectual property that provides exclusive publication, distribution, and usage rights for the author. Many different types of content can be protected by copyright. Examples include books, poems, plays, songs, films, and artwork….

« Back to FAQs What are the different types of copyright?

• Public Performing Right. The exclusive right of the copyright owner, granted by the U.S. Copyright Law, to authorize the performance or transmission of the work in public.
• Public Performance License.
• Reproduction Right.
• Mechanical License.
• Synchronization License.

There are three primary types of Intellectual Property: copyrights, trademarks, and patents. A copyright is a legal term that is used to describe a person’s ownership rights to an original expression of creativity….

A typical example of copyright infringement is the use of music in your videos. But it is a copyright violation to download a movie, TV show, music, software or e-book from a website that is not owned by the creator. Usually, these non-authorized sites also automatically prompt you to share the same material to others….

What are some examples of copyright works?

• A novel.
• A poem.
• A photograph.
• A movie.
• Lyrics to a song.
• A musical composition in the form of sheet music.
• A sound recording.
• A painting.

Names, Titles, Short Phrases Names, titles and short phrases and expressions can’t be copyrighted either. This means you can’t own the exclusive rights to any slogan, product description, title of work or business name….

In general, copyright does not protect individual words, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; or mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents.

Ideas can not be copyrighted because they are not fixed into a tangible medium of expression. For a work to be copyrighted, it has to be written down, saved to a hard drive or somehow otherwise fixed. However, even ideas that are fixed do not receive protection in and of themselves….

Only intellectual protection tools such as patents, designs or models, trademarks or copyrights can protect the materialization of an idea. The idea cannot be protected as such, but the means leading to this idea can be protected. Furthermore, the protection tools can be combined.

If your idea is so unusual that it’s patentable, before you show it off, you’ll want to have that company sign a nondisclosure agreement promising it won’t steal it. Get a lawyer experienced in your industry to help write it….

The simple answer is “no’. A prototype is not required prior to filing a patent application with the U.S. Patent Office. While prototypes can be valuable in developing your invention, they can also be costly.

The theory behind the “poor man’s patent” is that, by describing your invention in writing and mailing that documentation to yourself in a sealed envelope via certified mail (or other proof-of-delivery mail), the sealed envelope and its contents could be used against others to establish the date that the invention was ……

There are three types of patents: utility patents, design patents, and plant patents….

There are many avenues you can take at this stage. You may wish to hire professional prototype developers, engineers and designers, but others may be able to help you as well, including a handyman, a machinist or a student from a local industrial design college.

It is difficult to suggest an exact price; according to Entrepreneur, you can get a simple plastic prototype for just under $15 but the cost increases drastically if injection mold is required, the price range moves from as low as $10,000 to around $100,000….