Types of Intellectual Property Protection

The U.Va. Patent Foundation protects and licenses each of the four main types of intellectual property:

Patents

Think the light bulb and hydrogen fuel cells.
Patents protect machines, methods, manufactured items and compositions of matter that have never been invented before, are not easy to come up with or obvious, and have a practical use. Special patents also exist to protect plants and ornamental designs. Because patents exclude others from making, using, selling and importing the inventions, they provide a profit motive to companies interested in licensing early-stage technologies from U.Va.

Copyrights

Think the Beatles' "Abbey Road" and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Copyrights protect original works of authorship — including literary works, such as books and software programs; musical works; and pictorial works. Copyrights protect against piracy and plagiarism by excluding others from making, selling and performing your work and from preparing derivative works.

Trademarks

Think McDonald's^® golden arches and the Apple^® logo.
Trademarks protect words, phrases, symbols, colors, scents and designs that identify you or your company. Code for "That's me!" they are the reason you know what your McDonald's® hamburger will taste like the instant you see the logo on the wrapper.

Trade Secrets

Think the formula for Coca-Cola® and the recipe for Bush's® Baked Beans.
Sometimes, companies employ trade secrets to keep key formulas, techniques, processes and such from their competitors. While trade secrets aren't as relevant to universities as they are to companies, they can be a valuable form of protection — until the secret's out, of course.

Next: Why Protect My Research Discoveries?