Intellectual Property 1
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Whether you realize it or not, your creativity may be one of your most valuable business assets. The products you invent, the artwork you design, the words you create, and the name and logo you use to represent your business all have monetary value. Under law, these products of your creativity are considered intellectual property and, like any other property you own, can be protected against theft or unauthorized borrowing if you take the proper precaution at the proper times. This chapter will help you gain a better understanding of how and when to protect your creativity.
What is intellectual property?
When you hear the word property you probably think of things you own, like buildings, cars, televisions, jewelry, equipment, and other kinds of tangible property you can see, touch, buy, and sell There is another kind of property, however, that may be even more valuable to you as a business owner. It is intellectual property—property such as names, inventions, artwork, writing, music, computer programs, designs for products, formulas, processes, business plans, and anything else that results from creative endeavors.
Just like any other property, intellectual property has value under the law and can be bought or sold. Unlike other property, however, the value of intellectual property lies in its uniqueness and often in its reproducibility. The design for a new product, for instance, may be used to produce hundreds of thousands of items worth millions of dollars. Thus, if the design is illegally copied and used to manufacture a similar product, the individual or company that created the original product could sustain a significant loss of a money-making opportunity.
How is intellectual property protected under the law?
The laws that can be used to prevent others from illegally copying and profiting from your creative efforts are called intellectual property laws. Among them are the laws covering copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. These laws are specialized, often quite complex, and to some extent are being defined or redefined on a case-by-case basis as the law struggles to catch up with the information age and the technology that drives it.
How do the various intellectual property laws differ from one another?
The division lines aren't always cut-and-dried, but as a general rule of thumb:
- copyright laws help protect written, drawn, photographed, and artistic works
- patents and trade secrets laws help protect inventions, new machines, and new processes
- design patents help protect the way a product looks
- trademark and trade name regulations help protect the distinguishing identity of goods and services
Can a product be considered more than one type of intellectual property?
Yes, sometimes you can get protection for your intellectual property under more than one law. Gerry Elman, an intellectual property attorney who heads the law firm of Elman Technology Law, P.C. in Media, Pennsylvania (http://elman.com) says that some software, for example, "embodies patentable ideas, and can be protected by copyright as well." This, he says, is like having belt-and-suspenders protection for your property.
What is a copyright?
Copyright gives the owner of a work the exclusive rights to:
- reproduce the copyrighted work
- prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work
- distribute copies or phono records of the work to the public by sale or transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending
- perform or display the copyrighted work publicly
Can I copyright my idea?
No, you can't copyright an idea. Copyright protects only the means (words, a drawing, etc.) you use to express the idea. It doesn't prevent others from adopting your idea and using it themselves. For instance, if you drew a picture of a uniquely shaped computer desk, you would own a copyright on the drawing, but your copyright on the drawing would not stop someone from actually building and selling thousands of desks based on your picture. However, the copyright law has been extended to protect "architectural works," so you could use it to prevent someone from building the skyscraper from plans you'd created.
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