Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property is a type of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect.  Intellectual property rights are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a specified period of time. These property rights grant the holder a monopoly on the use of the item for a certain period. The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation of a wide variety of intellectual goods.

Intellectual property rights include patents, copyright, industrial design rights, trademarks, plant variety rights, trade dress, . There are also more specialized or derived varieties of exclusive rights, such as circuit design rights (called mask work rights in the US), supplementary protection certificates for pharmaceutical products (after expiry of a patent protecting them) and database rights (in European law).