Intellectual property is a body of law and a collective term referring to products of the mind—developed through human ingenuity and creativity—which have potential commercial value.
Four sub-areas of Intellectual Property:
Patents
Trademarks
Trade secrets
Copyright
From Intellectual Property lecture by Dr. Kip Currier
Intellectual property is a way of protecting ideas from being stolen by others to make a profit. The four sub-areas of intellectual property are further described in the tabs below.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants property rights to original inventions, from processes to machines. Patent law protects inventions from use by others and gives exclusive rights to one or more inventors.
There are three types of patents:
Design Patents: Protection for the aesthetics of a device or invention (e.g. the unique shape of a Coca-Cola bottle)
Plant Patents: Safeguards for new varieties of plants (e.g. pest-free versions of fruit trees)
Utility Patents: Protection for a product that serves a practical purpose and is useful (e.g. pharmaceuticals)
Utility patents are the largest area of patent law
From St. Francis School of Law
Trademarks protect logos, sounds, words, colors, or symbols used by a company to distinguish its service or product. Trademark examples include the Twitter logo, McDonald’s golden arches, and the font used by Dunkin.
Although patents protect one product, trademarks may cover a group of products. The Lanham Act, also called the Trademark Act of 1946, governs trademarks, infringement, and service marks.
From St. Francis School of Law
Trade secrets are a company’s intellectual property that isn’t public, has economic value, and carries information. They may be a formula, recipe, or process used to gain a competitive advantage. One example of this is Google's search algorithm.
To qualify as a trade secret, companies must work to protect proprietary information actively. Once the information is public knowledge, then it’s no longer protected under trade secrets laws.
From St. Francis School of Law
Copyright law protects the rights of the original creator of original works of intellectual property. Unlike patents, copyrights must be tangible. This includes photographs, books, poems, journal articles, videos/films, music, dance, computer software, architecture, and more.
A person can claim ownership of a work by writing an Original Work of Authorship (OWA). They can also register their copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.
From St. Francis School of Law
Fair use is a limitation & exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. To determine whether a copyrighted work is being used under the fair use exception use the PANE test.
Purpose, Amount, Nature, and Effect
Is the purpose of your project non profit and instructional?
Is the amount reasonable to obtain the learning objectives?
Is the nature of the use related to factual rather than creative use of the source?
Is the effect of your use potentially damaging to the future marketability of this source?
This video, created by cutting together clips of Disney movies that are in the public domain, explains copyright law, the public domain, and fair use of copyrighted content.