Understanding Intellectual Property: An Overview to Get You Started

This small statement says a lot, yet is very vague in helping people actually understand intellectual property. Put it simpler terms, intellectual property is something a person creates in their mind. This could in fact be anything from designing a brand new type of mousetrap, to creating a photograph or painting a beautiful picture.

Intellectual Property Falls into Two Categories

All intellectual property must fall into one of two defined categories. Industrial property includes things created for a specific use, such as patents and trademarks. Someone that creates a new mousetrap would apply for a patent. This protects their rights and states that they are the creator.

A trademark is a name or symbol that is applied to products. Brand names that are easily recognized are trademarked. This trademark states that no one else can use the name or symbol that was created for the product or company. Many people refer to tissues as Kleenex, when in fact Kleenex is a trademarked name that states who makes a particular brand of tissues.

The second category is Copyright. Such things that are copyrighted include something you have written, such as an article, a poem or a novel. Anything else that you create from an artistic point of view, such as photographs, paintings or sculptors falls into the copyright category. They belong to you as soon as you create them, put them to paper, or canvas.

Understanding Intellectual Property in Depth

This article as meant as an overview to encourage everyone to understand intellectual property in depth. If you are a writer, photographer or even someone who has invented a great idea, you should study intellectual property rights until you have an understanding of what it means.

Even if you are not a writer or a creator of anything that falls into the intellectual property rights status, you should still know exactly what intellectual property is. This is especially true for copyright protection laws. You would not realistically be able to package a box of tissues, call them Kleenex and sell them as your own, but do you know the laws governing the use of digital music, articles on the internet, or usage of photos you see everyday?

Trademarks and patents are harder to infringe upon, but the laws of copyrights are widely misunderstood. When someone puts pen to paper and writes a poem, it is immediately copyrighted and belongs to that person. Another cannot legally take that poem and publish or distribute it with out permission from the person that created it.

Photographs, even though widely accessible on the internet, also carry a copyright. They belong to someone, even though they are in plain view for all to see. Many digital music sites have copyright protection. Do you know if you are violating someone's copyright when you download a song?

As you can tell, Intellectual Property rights can become very detailed. Anyone that creates intellectual property needs to have a good understanding of intellectual property laws, as well as those who view and use someone else's intellectual property.

The World Intellectual Property Organization

The World Intellectual Property Organization is a good place to start when trying to understand all there is to know about intellectual property. The WIPO was established in 1970 and is now an International Organization. Their goal is to protect and educate people on the rights of intellectual property.

They have an excellent booklet that is available for a free download that goes into an in depth explanation about intellectual properties and the owner's rights. There are also many more resources on their site to help intellectual creators and intellectual users understand intellectual property rights.

This short article could never explain it all, but is meant as an overview to help you on the path to a better understanding of intellectual property rights. If you are a writer, photographer, inventor or artist it is important for you to know these laws to protect your work.

If you are not the creator of intellectual property, it is still important for you to know what you can use and how you can use it to protect yourself from infringing on someone else's property. Using someone else's intellectual property with out permission is the same as stealing something tangible that they own.

Source:

WIPO Handbook

Copyright Laws