Intellectual property (IP) management is important for any company who owns different types of IP. You'll need to properly manage your IP assets, to ensure that you make the most of them. Of course, to be able to do any sort of intellectual property management, you'll have to identify your IP in the first place. There are different types of intellectual property and patents, copyrights and trademarks are the more common forms of IP. Let's take a look at these types of IP and what exactly they are and what they cover.
Patent
Patents are granted to inventions, whether it is a device, process, or substance, which allows the owner to use that invention for their own purpose. For a patent to be granted, certain conditions must be met - it must be something new, it must be useful, it must a be something created from human activity, it must be innovative and it should not have been previously used before. Of course, there are things that cannot be patented - natural or human process cannot be patented, for example, and things which are just the extension of another invention (rather than something new) will not be given patents.
Copyrights
Creative, artistic or intellectual works are protected by copyrights. It protects these ideas from being used or reproduced without the owner's permission. Provided the idea is original, it is automatically protected by copyright law (and recognized in many countries around the world.) On average, the copyright of any given work is protected up to 70 years after the death of the creator. In general, these are the types of works protected by copyright: broadcasts, sound recordings, literary works, artistic works, dramatic works, musical works and cinematographic works. As the name implies, a copyright prevents other people from copying a given work without the permission of the owner.
Of course, there also exceptions to this copyright. In many instances, home or personal use is exempted. For example, if you bought a DVD and you want to copy it to your personal viewing device, you can't be sued for copyright infringement by the producers of the film. In many cases, "fair use" (reproducing only 10% or one chapter of a work) is considered exempted from copyrights.
Trademarks
As the name implies, a trademark is a symbol or mark used by a company to distinguish itself from other businesses. Such marks can often be the most valuable IP asset of any company, and such many companies use intellectual property management resources are often used to protect the trademark. Think, for example, of Apple' distinct white apple logo and how powerful it is. A company needs to apply and maintain their trademarks, and prevent other people from using it, or a similar trademark for their business activities.
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