The following

outline Outline or outlining may refer to: * Outline (list), a document summary, in hierarchical list format * Code folding, a method of hiding or collapsing code or text to see content in outline form * Outline drawing, a sketch depicting the outer edge ...

is provided as an overview of and topical guide to intellectual property:

Intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

– intangible assets such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property rights include copyright, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights, trade dress, and in some jurisdictions trade secrets. They may be sometimes called intellectual rights. ''See

outline of patents The following Outline (list), outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to patents: Patent – set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for detaile ...

for a topical guide and overview of

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

s.''

Types

Some examples of intellectual property include: * Artistic work **

Literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

Music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

Painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

Sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...

* Indigenous intellectual property *

Internet domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

Invention An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an i ...

Trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

Service mark A service mark or servicemark is a trademark used in the United States and several other countries to identify a service rather than a product. When a service mark is federally registered, the standard registration symbol ® or "Reg U.S. ...

Trade secret Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information that have inherent economic value because they are not generally known or readily asc ...

Rights

* Authors' rights *

Copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

Database right A database right is a ''sui generis'' property right, comparable to but distinct from copyright, that exists to recognise the investment that is made in compiling a database, even when this does not involve the "creative" aspect that is reflecte ...

Industrial design rights An industrial design right is an intellectual property right that protects the visual design of objects that are purely utilitarian. An industrial design consists of the creation of a shape, configuration or composition of pattern or color, or co ...

(or registered designs) *

Intellectual rights to magic methods Intellectual rights to magic methods refers to the legal and ethical debate about the extent to which proprietary or exclusive rights may subsist in the methods or processes by which magic tricks or illusions are performed. It is a subject of some c ...

* Moral rights *

Passing off Passing off is a common law tort which can be used to enforce unregistered trade mark rights. The tort of passing off protects the goodwill of a trader from misrepresentation. The law of passing off prevents one trader from misrepresenting go ...

Patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

s *

Personality rights Personality rights, sometimes referred to as the right of publicity, are rights for an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, such as name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal identifiers. They are generally considered as ...

Trade dress Trade dress is the characteristics of the visual appearance of a product or its packaging (or even the design of a building) that signify the source of the product to consumers. Trade dress is an aspect of trademark law, which is a form of intelle ...

Law

* Fashion law *

Integrated circuit layout design protection Layout designs (topographies) of integrated circuits are a field in the protection of intellectual property. In United States intellectual property law, a "mask work" is a two or three-dimensional layout or topography of an integrated circuit ...

Plant variety protection The Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 (PVPA), 7 U.S.C. §§ 2321-2582, is an intellectual property statute in the United States. The PVPA gives breeders up to 25 years of exclusive control over new, distinct, uniform, and stable sexually reprod ...

Supplementary protection certificate In the European Economic Area (European Union member countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) is a '' sui generis'' intellectual property (IP) right that extends the duration of certain rights ...

Copyright

* Berne Convention *

Copyright Clause The Copyright Clause (also known as the Intellectual Property Clause, Copyright and Patent Clause, or the Progress Clause) describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution ( Article I, Section 8, Clause 8). The clause, wh ...

of the U.S. Constitution *

History of copyright law History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

* Moral rights *

Philosophy of copyright The philosophy of copyright considers philosophical issues linked to copyright policy, and other jurisprudential problems that arise in legal systems' interpretation and application of copyright law. One debate concerns the purpose of copyright ...

Sound recording and reproduction Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...

Statute of Anne The Statute of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act 1710 (cited either as 8 Ann. c. 21 or as 8 Ann. c. 19), was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1710, which was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the g ...

Patents

s *

History of patent law The history of patents and patent law is generally considered to have started with the Venetian Statute of 1474. Early precedents There is some evidence that some form of patent rights was recognized in Ancient Greece. In 500 BCE, in the Greek ...

Biological patent A biological patent is a patent on an invention in the field of biology that by law allows the patent holder to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the protected invention for a limited period of time. The scope and reach of ...

Software patent A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, u ...

* Utility model

Procedures

* Patent application *

Patent infringement Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may v ...

and enforcement * Patent licensing *

Patent prosecution Patent prosecution describes the interaction between applicants and their representatives, and a patent office with regard to a patent, or an application for a patent. Broadly, patent prosecution can be split into pre-grant prosecution, which i ...

Legal requirements

* Patentable subject matter * Novelty * Utility (patent) *

Inventive step and non-obviousness The inventive step and non-obviousness reflect a general patentability requirement present in most patent laws, according to which an invention should be sufficiently inventive—i.e., non-obvious—in order to be patented. In other words, " heno ...

Industrial applicability In certain jurisdictions' patent law, industrial applicability or industrial application is a patentability requirement according to which a patent can only be granted for an invention which is susceptible of industrial application, i.e. for an in ...

Person having ordinary skill in the art A person having ordinary skill in the art (abbreviated PHOSITA), a person of (ordinary) skill in the art (POSITA or PSITA), a person skilled in the art, a skilled addressee or simply a skilled person is a legal fiction found in many patent laws th ...

* Prior art *

Inventorship In patent law, an inventor is the person, or persons in United States patent law, who contribute to the claims of a patentable invention. In some patent law frameworks, however, such as in the European Patent Convention (EPC) and its case law, no ...

Sufficiency of disclosure Sufficiency of disclosure or enablement is a patent law requirement that a patent application disclose a claimed invention in sufficient detail so that the person skilled in the art could carry out that claimed invention. The requirement is fu ...

* Unity of invention

By region or country

* Australian patent law * Canadian patent law *

Patent law of the People's Republic of China Patent law in modern mainland China began with the promulgation of the ''Patent Law of the People's Republic of China'', in 1984. In 1985, China acceded to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, followed by the Patent Coop ...

European patent law European patent law covers a range of legislations including national patent laws, the Strasbourg Convention of 1963, the European Patent Convention of 1973, and a number of European Union directives and regulations. For some states in Eastern ...

* Japanese patent law * United States patent law

Trademarks

Geographical indication A geographical indication (GI) is a name or sign used on products which corresponds to a specific geographical location or origin (e.g., a town, region, or country). The use of a geographical indication, as an indication of the product's source, ...

Protected designation of origin The protected designation of origin (PDO) is a type of geographical indication of the European Union and the United Kingdom aimed at preserving the designations of origin of food-related products. The designation was created in 1992 and its main ...

(including

service marks A service mark or servicemark is a trademark used in the United States and several other countries to identify a service rather than a product. When a service mark is federally registered, the standard registration symbol ® or "Reg U.S. ...

)

General topics

Anti-copyright Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implem ...

Arrow information paradox The Arrow information paradox (information paradox for short, or AIP), and occasionally referred to as Arrow's disclosure paradox, named after Kenneth Arrow, American economist and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hick ...

Background, foreground, sideground and postground intellectual property In the context of research and development (R&D) collaborations, background, foreground, sideground and postground intellectual property (IP) are four distinct forms of intellectual property assets. These are included in the broader and more general ...

Copyright for Creativity Copyright for Creativity - A Declaration for Europe issued on 5 May 2010, is intended as a statement of how copyright policy could be constructed in the Internet Age. It comes against the background of political debate within Europe to rethink cop ...

Copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

Copyfraud A copyfraud is a false copyright claim by an individual or institution with respect to content that is in the public domain. Such claims are wrongful, at least under US and Australian copyright law, because material that is not copyrighted is f ...

Industrial espionage Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governmen ...

** File sharing ** Music piracy **

Patent troll In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or ...

Plagiarism Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...

Scams in intellectual property Scams in intellectual property include scams in which inventors and other rights holders are lured to pay money for an apparently official registration of their intellectual property, or for professional development and promotion of their ideas, b ...

Digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...

Exhaustion of intellectual property rights The exhaustion of intellectual property rights constitutes one of the limits of intellectual property (IP) rights. Once a given product has been sold under the authorization of the IP owner, the reselling, rental, lending and other third party comme ...

** Exhaustion doctrine under U.S. law ** First-sale doctrine *

Free culture movement The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, ...

* Free software movement * Free content * Intangible asset *

Intellectual capital Intellectual capital is the result of mental processes that form a set of intangible objects that can be used in economic activity and bring income to its owner (organization), covering the competencies of its people ( human capital), the value rela ...

* Intellectual rights *

Intellectual property brokering An intellectual property broker mediates between the buyer and seller of intellectual property (IP) and may manage the many steps in the process of creating a deal with regard to the purchase, sale, license, or marketing of intellectual property as ...

* Intellectual property education *

Intellectual property infringement An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...

Intellectual property valuation An intellectual property valuation - or economic appraisal - is prepared, for example, for transactions -merger and acquisition - pricing and strategic purposes, financing securitization and collateralization, tax planning and compliance, and li ...

* IPR-Helpdesk *

Legal aspects of computing Information technology law (also called cyberlaw) concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both ( digitized) information and s ...

License A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

Public copyright license A public license or public copyright licenses is a license by which a copyright holder as licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to any and all persons in the general public as licensees. By applying a public license to a work, pro ...

Copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

Free license A free license or open license is a license which allows others to reuse another creator’s work as they wish. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or commercial license. Most free licenses are wo ...

Share-alike Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copy ...

* Limitations and exceptions to copyright ** Fair dealing ** Fair use **

Freedom of panorama Freedom of panorama (FOP) is a provision in the copyright laws of various jurisdictions that permits taking photographs and video footage and creating other images (such as paintings) of buildings and sometimes sculptures and other art works ...

Right to quote Right to quote or right of quotation or quotation right is one of the copyright exceptions provided by the Berne Convention, article 10: "It shall be permissible to make quotations ... provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, an ...

List of intellectual property law journals This list includes notable journals and magazines concerned with intellectual property (IP) law and business, and their various sub-fields, such as copyright, patent and trademark laws. The list also includes official journals and gazettes of pate ...

Orphan works An orphan work is a copyright-protected work for which rightsholders are positively indeterminate or uncontactable. Sometimes the names of the originators or rightsholders are known, yet it is impossible to contact them because additional details ...

Public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

Reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

* Societal views on intellectual property *

Societal views on patents Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century that were es ...

* Soft intellectual property *

Soft IP The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation, Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the ...

Legal agreements and government enforcement

Adelphi Charter The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property is the result of a project commissioned by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, London, England, and is intended as a positive statement o ...

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international legal agreement between all the member nations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It establishes minimum standards for the regulation by nat ...

(TRIPS) *

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a plurilateral agreement, multilateral treaty for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement that did not enter into force. The agreement aims t ...

(ACTA) *

China International Copyright Expo China International Copyright Expo is an annual event that brings companies and organizations, both governmental and independent, to China to discuss various aspects of copyright and intellectual property rights (IPR). The Expo was first held in 2 ...

* Doha Declaration * EU Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights *

French Intellectual Property Code The French Intellectual Property Code (IPC; French: ''Code de la propriété intellectuelle''), is a corpus of law relating to intellectual and industrial property. It was formalised by Law No 92-597 of 1 July 1992, replacing earlier laws relating t ...

Intellectual property issues in cultural heritage (IPinCH) The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project is a seven-year international research initiative based at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. IPinCH's work explores the rights, values, and responsibilitie ...

* Intellectual property organization (including a list of intellectual property organizations) * International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) * Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property *

Plant Variety Protection Act The Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 (PVPA), 7 U.S.C. §§ 2321-2582, is an intellectual property statute in the United States. The PVPA gives breeders up to 25 years of exclusive control over new, distinct, uniform, and stable sexually reprod ...

(U.S.) *

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...

World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, 15 specialized agencies of the United Nation ...

(WIPO) *

World Intellectual Property Day World Intellectual Property Day is observed annually on April 26. The event was established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 to "raise awareness of how patents, copyright, trademarks and designs impact on daily life ...

(April 26)