Intellectual property
Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property is a bundle of property rights that grant companies the right to protect materials created by them including business information.

Intellectual property comprises copyright, designs, patents, confidential information and trade marks. Each of these areas of law protect different types of materials and have mutually exclusive criterion for subsistence of protection. Thus the definition of intellectual property rights is simply a reference to more defined rights (copyright, patents etc) that are categorised as "intellectual property".

These intellectual property rights are just as much property as land and physical objects. The difference being that they are said to be “intangible“ property, which means that intellectual property rights cannot be physically touched, like a car or a house: yet they are property. They may be bought, sold, licensed and used as security like any other property.

To illustrate the difference between physical property and intellectual property, suppose you purchase a book from a bookstore. After purchasing the book one walks out of the bookshop owning the physical copy of the book. Intellectual property rights vest in that book. Copyright protects the copy of the book being copied by the person, without the permission of the copyright owner, which will be the author or more likely the publisher.

In this way the physical copy of the book is completely separate to the intellectual property rights that exist in it.