Monday, October 18, 2010

Kinds Of Intellectual Property

By Faith Diaz

Tangible assets like a house, jewelery, currency, investments, car etc are not the only types of property that one can possess and claim protection under the law. There are several other forms of non-material property known as intellectual property that have been provided for under the law and granted protection against misuse. There are three primary types of property which come under this classification: patents, trademarks and copyrights.

Copyrights are intellectual property dealing with rights of the creator over his or her original creation. This right may be awarded for songs, films, videos and other forms of artistic expressions and not only the written or printed material. Under copyright law, the creator of the work gets a number of rights which include monetary rights to income generated from the work and acknowledgment as sole owner of that work.

In contrast, trademarks accord the person who has registered it, the protection over certain graphical representations, text or marks which point to the creator or source of products to thwart replication and thus infringement. They safeguard the trademark holders from being economically exploited by unscrupulous elements.

The third kind of intellectual property right is the patent, which is granted to inventors to safeguard their inventions and creations. It gives them sole right of use and sale of their work for a particular period.

Some other, less commonly found intellectual property rights are also safeguarded by the law. To give some examples of these uncommon intellectual properties, they can be some special knowledge carried forward by a particular family only; company secrets like recipes behind successful products; and location based symbols or marks to refer to a product arising from that place, like Champagne.

Though these forms of intellectual property are distinct from each other there are certain commonalities between the three. Any of these are fully admissible under the law and the rightful owner can take legal recourse to enforce his right and claim compensation for any violation. - 42493

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