Dec. 09 blog–Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual property law is a field of legal practice that concerns the ownership of mental creations that have commercial or artistic value. Under intellectual property law, owners of a variety of intangible assets are given certain exclusive rights to those assets. Assets that come under the purview of intellectual property law include but are not limited to: artistic, musical, and literary works; inventions and discoveries; and designs, symbols, phrases, and words. Some commonly found examples of intellectual property are patents, industrial trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks. Even though several of the legal concepts that concern intellectual property have developed over hundreds of years, it wasn’t until the 1800s that the term “intellectual property” came into use, and it was not until the latter part of the 20th century that the term found wide acceptance in the United States.

Intellectual property rights are non-permanent monopolies administered by the state that regard the communication and deployment of information and ideas. Intellectual property rights are most often limited to goods which can be enjoyed or put to use by several people at once. These goods are called “non-rival goods.” This is in contrast to what are called “rival goods,” like chairs and socks, which can only be used by one person at a time. For example, several people at once could view the same television program. Some people object to the term “intellectual property” based on the reasoning that property as such can only properly refer to rival goods (or that one cannot “own” non-rival goods).

Mueller Hillin specializes in Intellectual Property Law in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston and Austin.