What Is Intellectual Property?
Intellectual property is an idea: a copyrighted work like a song or story, a patent, a design or drawing, or a trademark. In the United States, if you have created a work of art, it belongs to you, all rights, for a minimum seventy-five years, and you or your heirs can renew that ownership. That’s why you have to pay the writers of the Happy Birthday song to sing Happy Birthday at a commercial establishment, and why you can’t just share songs on Napster without getting in trouble. Intellectual property in the form of songs, stories, or designs are automatically yours; you don’t have to file anything to have ownership. You can sell any rights to that intellectual property you wish. If you want to protect your intellectual property rights to a story or song, you can either file with the US Copyright Office for a copyright, or you can take the simple expedient of sealing it in a tamper-proof envelope and mailing it to yourself. If you save that postmarked sealed envelope without opening it, it proves that you created that work of art prior to the date on the envelope; this sort of intellectual property proof is allowed in a court of law. If your work of art is judged by experts to be 25% original, then it is considered a new work and you have intellectual property ownership of it. Patents and trademarks are a little different. If you invent something, in order to protect your intellectual property