What is Intellectual Property Law?

Intellectual Property Law provides you legal protection for your Intellectual Property. This generally refers to creations of the mind. This can include inventions, literary and artistic works, designs and symbols. The law protects your intellectual property to ensure that you earn recognition and/or financial earnings from your innovations. The intent of the law is to encourage creativity and innovations to flourish by guaranteeing benefits to you, the creator.

Types of Intellectual Property protection

There are three types of Intellectual Property protection: patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

• Patents protect the invention of tangible products, useful processes, and ornamental designs of products. Tangible products are any physical objects that can be perceived by touch. For example, a bicycle, a ball, and a computer chip are all tangible products. The federal government issues a patent in the form of documentation that gives the owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, distributing, or selling the tangible product described in the documents. This means if you invent something new, like a better mouse trap, no one else can make, use, distribute, or sell that mouse trap without your permission. Patents are valid for 20 years after the date of filing an application for the patent.
• Copyrights protect different forms of written and artistic expressions. This may include books, poetry, paintings, sculpture, films, advertisements, songs, music, computer programs, maps, technical drawings, databases, and a number of other types of works. Copyright protection gives the creator the economic and moral rights to their work. For individual creators, copyright protection lasts their entire life plus an additional 70 years. This is so the heirs of the creator may benefit from the creation. For creators who were anonymous, working under a pseudonym, or worked for hire, copyright protection will last 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever is shorter. Although it is not always necessary, it is best to show your claim to the copyright for published material. Generally you should put the symbol ©, the word “copyright”, or the abbreviation “Copr” in close proximity to the first year of publication and the name of the copyright owner. For example:
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• Our attorneys can help you obtain Federal Copyright Registration for your material and can also help you if you believe someone is using your copyrighted material without your permission or has plagerized your material.