Name: Boon Teh Student #: 100866301 Section: C

Lecture #: 9 Lecture title: Intellectual Property

There are 4 main types of intellectual property and they are as follows:

o Patents o Copyright and,

o Industrial Designs o Trade-marks

A patent grants its owner exclusive right to use the patent and/or sell the product associated

with the patent itself. The legal applicable term for a patent owner to exercise his right is 20

years starting from the date of application and the application for the patent itself is non-

renewable.

Patents are essentially a compromise between the government and the owner in which an

exchange of monopoly is traded for technical teaching i.e the knowledge of the patent itself.

However, a patent must meet the requirement of being new and useful in which the former

entails novelty and innovation whereas the latter entails utility or function of the invention.

Ownership of a patent is highly circumstantial as the inventor may or may not be the owner

of a patent. An issue with patents is the Non-Disclosure of Inventions. Non-Disclosure

Agreements should be used whenever an inventor needs to disclose information with regards

to his invention. Patent ownership system in North America is based on the first to file basis.

Trade secrets are anything which confidential and can include research, inventions which are

not patented and the technical know-how. Trade secrets have the advantage of having no

applicable time limit although there are dangers of reverse engineering of the product or the

leakage of exposure by employees.

Industrial designs are intellectual property with regards to appearances of a product and does

not include functional features of the product itself. It has a restricted scope of protection

and have a legal applicable term limit of only 10 years.

Trade-marks are used by companies to distinguish their products or services. Trade-marks

have no time limit and their registrations have renewable 15-year terms.

Copyrights are anything that are created in written or electronic form and are protected

world-wide. Legal time limit of copyrights include the lifetime of the author and 50 years

after his/her death.