What Is It?
Intellectual property is a set of intangible properties that include various intangible creations of the mind of man. There are several kinds of intellectual property, which are protected by legislation in different countries. The most famous categories are patents, trademarks, titles, and copyrights. Trademarks, domain names, and online names are other important forms of intellectual property. All these are protected by international conventions.
Patents are one of the important categories of intellectual property. A patent grants the exclusive right to a named person to produce an invention or discover something new and useful within a given time. Patents are also granted for various forms of artistic works. For instance, a mark can be used to identify a particular type of food, a set of symbols, or a set of words. However, the legal term for patents is patent.
Ownership of the copyright is not granted to anyone permanently, but it does grant a perpetual right to the owner to license the use of the work to others. Copyright law was created so as to encourage the creation of new works and to discourage copying. It has been said that it is much easier to turn a master into a slave than it is to turn a slave into a master. Therefore, in order to prevent one from copying the work, it is very important to secure a copyright and to hold the copyrights for 70 years. However, it has been seen that many web sites and people, who have legitimate business motives, make use of the resources available on the internet to get copyrights even before the law of copyright laws are properly enacted.