A term often described in legal sense to protect intellectual ownership through patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc. After collecting a set of 350 journals on IP, Dennis Crouch parsed through the documents in order to identify the focal points of these IP journals. His point was to discover what IP laws commonly serve.
As a result, Crouch discovered that 33% of the IP articles focus only on one piece of IP. Meanwhile, just below 66% focus on two IP areas. The most common combinations are Patent&Copyright and Copyright&Trademark over Patent&Trademark.
For definition sake:
Copyright protects the expresion of an idea, but not the idea itself.
Trade secrets are similar to copyright but it is used to protect competitive edge.
Patents cover the idea itself.
Trademarks are words or symbols that designates a differentiated source or producer.
This means that more people are protecting the ideas and protection of them over just the ideas and the symbol that communicates them.
I think this is definitely intuitive in terms of trends in intellectual ownership. Yet, I am glad I read an article that clearly defined the different concepts for me.
Article source: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/02/what-intellectual-property.html
Definition source: http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trade_defin.jsp
Hello. This clarifies the definitions for me too. I do sometimes confuse the copyright, patents, and trademarks sometimes. Especially, when they are combined, it creates confusion. With what are trade secrets combined with?
ReplyDeleteThanks for spelling out the definitions of the various types of IP! I also read and wrote about one of Dennis Crouch's articles in Patently-O, in which he analyzed the geographic clustering of patent, copyright, and trademark suits. I was making a few assumptions when I wrote it, but your summary helped me to better learn about the topic!
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested in my blog post, you can read it at http://albertyamieor190g.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-his-post-to-patently-o-titled.html
Thanks for the video! It is interesting that we use so many terms that relate to patents and IP but all have their own subtleties that make one word choice more appropriate than another. In terms of legal basis, does this mean that only patents can protect the idea and can be used when in court? I guess does this mean copyright claims couldn't be substantiated in court if someone doesn't own a patent? Its interesting if the two are mutually exclusive or have interacting parts that can be used in conjunction to strengthen a claim!
ReplyDeleteWhich source did you use to get your definitions of the terms?
ReplyDeleteI actually looked at: http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trade_defin.jsp
ReplyDeleteI will add it onto the blog post!
What kind of context would these combination filings be used for? I understand the overlap of copyright and and trademark, but what sort of invention would require both patenting of the concept and symbol protection?
ReplyDelete