Intellectual property, an intangible form of property, is created through mental effort.
It includes creative effort in the form of inventions and designs as well as artistic expression. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are examples of intangible assets that are granted to the creators of creative works by federal and state laws, allowing the creator to control the intellectual property exclusively.
Copyrighted Works
“Original works of authorship” are the only things that are eligible for copyright protection. The protection provided by copyright include the rights to reproduce, make derivative works, distribute copies, and publicly perform the work in question. Copyright protection does not extend to simple ideas, systems, concepts, or principles, nor does it cover discoveries in their abstract forms. This runs counter to the widespread belief that it does. A work must be fixed in a concrete medium of expression from which it may be communicated in order for it to be eligible for copyright protection. Works such as writing, music, dramas and plays, dance, pictorial work, graphics and sculptures, films, sound recordings, and architectural work are all examples of copyrightable works.
Patented Works
A patent is a sort of monopoly that allows its owner the exclusive and temporary right to create, use, offer for sale, or sell a certain invention in the United States, as well as the right to import or export that invention from another country. The purpose of granting patent protection to innovators is to encourage them to invest time and resources in the discovery of new and beneficial discoveries. In exchange, inventors must reveal patent information to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in order to achieve the restricted monopoly. The PTO application for a patent must demonstrate patentable subject matter, usefulness, novelty, non-obviousness, and enablement.
Trademarks
For a word, phrase, logo, symbol, color, shape, sound, or scent to be eligible for trademark protection, the term, phrase, logo, symbol, color, shape, sound, or scent to identify the product or service in the marketplace. In addition, there is a requirement that the word, phrase, logo, symbol, shape, or sound be distinctive. The exclusive right to use a trademark in commercial settings belongs to the business that was the first to put that mark to use in actual commerce. The second requirement of distinctiveness categorizes trademarks into five different classes: fanciful marks, arbitrary marks, suggestive marks, descriptive marks, and generic marks. The first four of these classes are eligible for registration, whereas the fifth class, generic marks, is generally not eligible for registration.
Trade Secrets
The Arizona Uniform Trade Secrets Act (AUTSA) defines a trade secret as information that possesses independent economic value because it is not widely known by others who might gain economic value from its disclosure or use. Additionally, the information is something that the holder of the trade secret makes an effort to keep secret by using reasonable efforts. In order to successfully enforce a trade secret under the AUTSA, the owner of the trade secret has two requirements: first, they must demonstrate the trade secret is eligible for protection, and second, they must demonstrate that the defendant unlawfully obtained and misappropriated the secret information.