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Creede Lambard
8,798 PointsQuestion about corporate terminology
Hi,
I just finished the "Terminology" quiz in the "Corporate Structure" section. One of the questions was:
Intellectual property includes categories such as:
- Bank accounts, cars, computers and cell phones
- House, car, bank loan
- Patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets
- Business methods, plans, logos and secret recipes
The first two are obviously wrong, and the answer the quiz expects is the fourth. However, I think the third answer fits the question better. Business methods and the like are types of intellectual property, certainly, but patents, trade marks, copyrights and trade secrets are the four categories of intellectual property, as any IP lawyer will tell you.
So why is it that the specific items in the fourth answer are considered the "right" answer?
Thanks.
3 Answers
Pasan Premaratne
Treehouse TeacherHi Creede,
Patents, trademarks and so on are tools that are used to protect intellectual property. They are not intellectual property in their own right. You use a patent to protect a piece of intellectual property, whether it is an invention, a process or something else.
The answers in the third choice are common IP categories, as you mentioned, because your IP falls into one of those protection categories depending on what it is. As an example from the US Patent Office website:
"A patent is a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted."
The important point I want to highlight from that quote is that a patent is something granted to you by the US Government. By that definition, it cannot be one's intellectual property to begin with.
The question asks which of the following categories are examples of intellectual properties and not the tools you can use to protect it. With that in mind, the fourth answer is the right answer, and not the third one.
Does that make sense?
Andrew Whitfield
5,239 PointsThat is a very clear explanation. A patent may or may not be granted in different areas, as well. A patent in the USA may not be granted or recognised in Europe or the United Kingdom.
However, your intellectual property may well be. Differentiating the tools, and where those tools are applicable, from the IP itself is important.
Creede Lambard
8,798 PointsHi Pasan,
Thanks for the quick and thorough reply. I'm still hung up on the word "category" though, since in my mind both the broader classifications (trademarks and the like) and the more restrictive qualifications (such as logos) qualify as categories. I wish I had a better terminology to propose, maybe similar to family, genus and species in zoology; unfortunately nothing comes to mind.
I suppose I shouldn't complain, since I did get 100% the second time through. :-) And in the end it's not that important, as long as your viewers understand the concept of intellectual property and maybe the broad distinctions between them (like the difference between a trademark and a copyright). Everything else, as you rightly stress over and over, is why you hire an IP lawyer to sort it all out.