9/14/2004

Intellectual Property Law Primer

Another topic of discussion at the GATE program class on entrepreneurship that I taught this morning at Duquesne University was intellectual property law protection.

On this topic, several excellent articles are available as primers that explain the basics of the four major areas of intellectual property protection:

"Copyright law, which protects original 'works of authorship.'
Patent law, which protects new, useful, and 'nonobvious' inventions and processes.
Trademark law, which protects words, names, and symbols used by manufacturers and businesses to identify their goods and services.
Trade secret law, which protects valuable information not generally known that has been kept secret by its owner."

The foregoing was taken from timestream.com article: Intellectual Property Law Primer that focuses on the issues from the perspective of a multimedia developer.

A like article from CSOonline.com with practical advice for information security professionals may be found here.

A much more detailed treatment of the topic is found in the article by Susan F. Olive: Intellectual Property Primer