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As a business owner or a creator, you’ve probably heard that you need to protect your IP, but what exactly is IP? How do you protect it?
What is intellectual property? Intellectual property is essentially a way to protect creations of the mind. It gives creators and innovators exclusive legal rights to their work.
It encompasses a wide range of things, including inventions, books, music, art, logos, trade names, trade secrets and designs. Think of it as a legal framework that allows creators or owners to control, profit from and safeguard their work, while preventing others from using it without proper permission.
Intellectual property not only protects the creator’s efforts, but also promotes innovation by encouraging people to develop new ideas, knowing that they will have ownership of their creations.
How Lawyers Think About Intellectual Property
So when a patent lawyer or a trademark lawyer like I am talks about intellectual property, we think of it and the law thinks of it in terms of specific buckets.
Each bucket of intellectual property is based on a specific body of law, specific statute. So we don’t tend to think of intellectual property in general. We talk about it with respect to specific types of intellectual property.
So it’s best to understand what those four main types of intellectual property are.
The Four Main Types of Intellectual Property
The four main types of intellectual property are:
- Patents
- Trademarks
- Copyrights
- Trade Secrets
I’ll tell you a little bit about each of them.
Patents
A patent is designed to protect new inventions, products, processes, designs or plants. They cover innovations that are new, useful and non obvious, like groundbreaking gadgets, complex machinery, pharmaceutical compounds, cutting edge technologies.
There are different kinds of patents. Namely, there’s a utility patent, a design patent and a plant patent. Each covers a different patentable invention.
A patent grants an innovator exclusive rights to make, use or sell their invention for a set period of time, usually between 15 and 20 years, depending on the type. After that, the invention described in the patent can be used by anyone for free, which is what is sometimes referred to as entering the public domain.
Patent exclusivity gives creators the opportunity to benefit economically from their hard work, while preventing others from copying or profiting while the patent is enforced.
Trademarks
The second kind of intellectual property are trademarks.
Trademarks are about protecting your brand identity. They safeguard things like logos, names, slogans or symbols that make your business and its products that are marked with that trademark stand out to consumers.
Think of Nike’s swoosh, Apple’s logo or the McDonald’s golden arches.
Trademarks ensure that customers can recognize and trust your products or services and to separate or distinguish them from your competitors. A strong trademark is a valuable business asset, helping to build customer loyalty and to reinforce your brand’s reputation and identity.
Trademark rights start when you use a name, a logo, slogan or symbol to sell or advertise a particular kind of product or service marked with that trademark, because that’s when customers can begin recognizing that a particular type of goods or services marked with your trademark are from your company.
Sometimes, if someone uses the same trademark on completely different and unrelated products or services, your use of the trademark and their use of the trademark might be able to coexist because customers are not going to be confused, or might not be confused by two very different businesses using the same trademark on very different goods and services.
On the other hand, if two businesses are using very similar trademarks on very similar goods and services, or even the identical goods and services, that might be an infringement of a trademark.
It’s particularly important for businesses to register their trademarks, because doing so gives that business legal protection against unauthorized use of the trademark that might confuse consumers into thinking that the unauthorized users’ goods and services are the goods and services of the trademark owner.
Another benefit of registering your trademarks is that it will prevent others from registering similar trademarks for similar goods in the future.
Copyrights
The third kind of intellectual property are copyrights.
Copyrights protect creative works such as books, films, music, paintings, photographs, even software code and even, for example, this video.
They grant creators exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, perform, or display their work, ensuring that their creative efforts are safeguarded for a significant amount of time.
Copyright protections usually last for the creator’s lifetime, plus an additional 70 years for copyright that is owned by the creator, who we call an author.
If, however, the work is created by an employee of a company, and the company is going to be the owner of the copyrighted work and the copyright in it, then that’s referred to as a “work made for hire,” and the duration of a work made for hire copyright is 95 years from the first day that it was published.
Copyright protection ensures creative professionals can protect their work and protect their legacy.
Trade Secrets
The fourth kind of intellectual property I want to tell you about are trade secrets.
Trade secrets are about maintaining confidentiality rather than filing some applications to secure your rights.
Trade secrets involve confidential business information, like formulas, strategies, processes, customer lists, algorithms — anything that gives your business a competitive edge.
Now, often, when an inventor or business does not think that patent protection is possible, she opts to keep her innovation as a trade secret.
Famous examples of trade secrets include Coca Cola’s secret recipe, or Google’s proprietary search algorithm, or even YouTube’s proprietary algorithm, which — click like and subscribe — to boost this video’s rating on the trade secret for the YouTube video ratings.
Trade secrets remain protected as long as the information is kept confidential and the business takes reasonable measures to preserve its secrecy.
That means that, unlike patents, trade secrets can last for decades. Again, think about the formula for Coca Cola. If it had been patented, that patent would have expired almost 100 years ago, but it was kept as a trade secret, and so it’s still a secret.
But unlike patents, if someone can figure out your trade secret independently (what we call reverse engineering) or if they just stumble upon it on their own, then you can’t stop them from using it.
So it’s also important to remember that once a trade secret is made public and becomes widely known, it’s not a trade secret anymore.
Why Intellectual Property Matters
I hope this has helped you learn about the four types of intellectual property — namely, patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets.
Intellectual property matters, and understanding it is vital to anyone who’s creating, innovating, building a brand, or building a business that’s going to rely on intellectual property.
By using the proper intellectual property protections, you can safeguard your work, establish your business’s identity, and ensure that you are fairly compensated for your creativity or your invention.
Knowing and understanding intellectual property empowers you to take control of your assets — the assets of your mind — giving you the tools to succeed in a competitive world.
Legal Disclaimer
Thank you. Now the quick legal disclaimer.
My name is Matt Lapple. I’m a registered patent attorney in Irvine, California. My firm is Lapple Ubell IP Law, LLP.
This video might be construed as attorney advertising. This video is made available for informational purposes only and is not to be considered legal advice on any subject matter.
Second, Lapple Ubell IP Law, LLP is not your lawyer. I am not your lawyer, unless and until you have received, reviewed and signed my firm’s attorney-client fee agreement.
Reading our blog, looking at our website, or listening to this video does not form an attorney-client relationship between you and me or my law firm.
So if you have specific questions about intellectual property, you should contact your attorney. If you are interested in talking to me about it, reach out and we’ll see if it makes sense for us to talk.
The opinions that are expressed here are my own and should not be attributed to any of my firm’s clients, the other lawyers in my firm, or anyone beyond me.
Lapple Ubell IP Law is an intellectual property law firm based in Irvine, California, dedicated to helping clients protect, manage, and enforce their innovations and creative assets. The firm provides strategic counsel on patents, trademarks, copyrights, and related IP matters for businesses of all sizes.
The author, Matt Lapple, is an experienced intellectual property attorney and a past-president of the Orange County Intellectual Property Law Association. If you have questions please contact Matt at matt@lappleubell.com or 949-756-4889.