Protect Your Assets: An Intellectual Property (IP) Primer

For many businesses, large and small, their "Intellectual Property" (IP) is one of their most valuable assets. So understanding IP is important. Here's a Primer on what the five main IP rights are, how they are created and how to maintain them.

1. Trade-mark. A trade-mark is a mark that distinguishes one owner's goods and services from those of others; it can be: a word, design mark or a three dimensional trademark, including a distinguishing guise (shaping of wares or their containers, or a mode of wrapping or packing wares). Registration isn't necessary to create trade-mark rights; they can be created by operation of the "common law" (the law made by judicial decisions) based on use of the mark. However, these common law trade-mark rights are limited in geographic scope to the area in which the mark has been used and are more difficult to enforce than registered trade-mark rights. Registration gives the registrant the exclusive right to use the mark throughout