Tom Jurgensen is an entrepreneurial attorney and business leader who is also managing shareholder of the Catalyst Law Group APC, a technology-focused law firm based in San Diego. He talks here about what exactly intellectual property is, and how a lawyer can help you protect yours.
Intellectual property is a creation of the mind; valuable property which the mind has created. That is the best way I would put it. People have all kinds of properties, like cars and homes. But intellectual property is property that is creative, that comes from the minds of humans, whether it is an invention, a musical score or a book.
Examples of intellectual property are:
- Patents, which cover inventions.
- Trademarks, which cover the names that people use for their products or business, like Coca-Cola, .
- Copyrights, which cover creative expressive works, which would be a variety of things such as songs, paintings, TV productions, movies, scripts — both written, visual, oral.
- Trade secrets, which cover exactly what the name suggests. They are a valuable way of doing a business or a method of making a product, something that you want to keep secret. You do not want to give that method away or give away your business to the public as it is secret and needs to be kept secret.
Those are the four types of intellectual property. The first three are all protected through interaction with the government, and that is why a lawyer comes in. With those, you would have to register your right to them, or obtain your right to them, directly with the government. And you would need a lawyer for that.
Patents are a bit different. Patents protect inventions; they take the longest to obtain and are the most expensive. They protect new ways of making products or materials or new devices — all sorts of things, a medical product or a mechanical one, or a new software application.
A lot of the most important products commercially are protected with patents, and all of our big companies have huge patient portfolios. And all of them require the services of a patent lawyer to get them. It is the same for trademarks and copyrights.
I used to work for 3M corporation. They have tens of thousands of patents, all over the world. All of our big companies have huge patient portfolios, and all of them rely on the services of a patent lawyer to get them. Without a good patent lawyer, getting a patent can be difficult.
This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.
