How to Label: IP Law

IP law focuses on the protection of the intellectual property and the legal of pursuit of infringement of the owner’s intellectual property. In order to proper protect any owner’s intellectual property, IP laws offer different or slight different definitions of different kind of intellectual property. EU countries and U.S. have similar definition when labeling different IP; we will use the IP law in U.S. as an example to illustrate how different kinds of intellectual property are labeled.

Patent:  In order to qualify for a patentable invention, the invention should have three characteristics: 1) Novelty; which means that the subject matter is new taking into account the publicly available state of the art; 2) non-obviousness, the invention has to be non-obvious to a person skilled in the art; and 3) utility, meaning that the invention should be capable to being applicable in the field of industry, including agriculture.

Copyrights:  Under U.S. law, the author of a work is automatically the owner of the copyright in the work. If an employee creates a work as part of his employment, the employer is considered to be the "author" for copyright purposes. Under U.S. copyright law, software is considered to be a “literary work”and is protected by the copyright law.

Trademarks: A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. 

Trade Secrets:  trade secret is protected by contract law. Trade secret law protects any secret process, technique or information which gives the owner a competitive advantage. If the owner of a trade secret fears that his trade secret is being used by a competitor or by an employee or customer in an improper manner, he can bring suit to enforce his rights under the applicable contracts and, under appropriate circumstances, obtain an injunction preventing use of the trade secret and requiring that all matters pertaining to the trade secret be returned to the owner.

For more information about U.S. IP Law, please visite http://www.uspto.gov/

For more information about European IP Law, please visit  http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/internal_market/businesses/intellectual_property/index_en.htm