The list of distinct 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 are given particular exclusive rights to a sort of intangible assets, like musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries, and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. There are four main types of intellectual property - trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks.
Copyrights safeguard original works, either published or unpublished. They are used to protect the ownership of works like poetic compositions, songs, stories, movies etc. They permit the users to exclusively use various forms of their creation in different mediums with sole legal authority over replication, adaptation, sale etc for a prescribed span of time. The owner has a claim over his work for more than 50 years, which is valid even after his demise and any unlawful use of the creation within this time is treated as an offence.
Patents are certified rights that protect the creations of the inventors by disallowing other people from producing or selling their invention. They are usually applicable to cases such as significant biological discoveries, new theories in science and technological breakthroughs. The protection cover provided by a patent in most nations is for a span of 20 years, after which the invention no longer remains the sole property of the inventor.
Trade secrets are certain confidential pieces of information that help a company to gain an edge over its rivals in the market. A trade secret can be anything from a confidential report to a cooking recipe, or a database containing addresses and contact information of high profile clients. More often than not, trade secrets are matters relating to internal management of the firm, which do not call for any type of government intervention. Two methods used most often to protect a trade secret are keeping it in a bank locker or confining it to a limited number of executives, so that it is not accessible to several people and hence remains secure.
Trademarks are words, logos and designs that identify a particular brand or firm and differentiate it from the competing brands. Trademarks act as an immediate recall of the manufacturer in the customer's mind and give rise to a particular brand identity. Generally, a trademark registration remains valid for a decade after which it has to be renewed.
Copyrights safeguard original works, either published or unpublished. They are used to protect the ownership of works like poetic compositions, songs, stories, movies etc. They permit the users to exclusively use various forms of their creation in different mediums with sole legal authority over replication, adaptation, sale etc for a prescribed span of time. The owner has a claim over his work for more than 50 years, which is valid even after his demise and any unlawful use of the creation within this time is treated as an offence.
Patents are certified rights that protect the creations of the inventors by disallowing other people from producing or selling their invention. They are usually applicable to cases such as significant biological discoveries, new theories in science and technological breakthroughs. The protection cover provided by a patent in most nations is for a span of 20 years, after which the invention no longer remains the sole property of the inventor.
Trade secrets are certain confidential pieces of information that help a company to gain an edge over its rivals in the market. A trade secret can be anything from a confidential report to a cooking recipe, or a database containing addresses and contact information of high profile clients. More often than not, trade secrets are matters relating to internal management of the firm, which do not call for any type of government intervention. Two methods used most often to protect a trade secret are keeping it in a bank locker or confining it to a limited number of executives, so that it is not accessible to several people and hence remains secure.
Trademarks are words, logos and designs that identify a particular brand or firm and differentiate it from the competing brands. Trademarks act as an immediate recall of the manufacturer in the customer's mind and give rise to a particular brand identity. Generally, a trademark registration remains valid for a decade after which it has to be renewed.
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