Intellectual Property

The three main branches of intellectual property law are copyright, trademark and patents. These are sufficiently different in their nature.  

• Patents provide a monopoly right to the first person (or company) to invent something. To prevent others from free riding on the inventiveness of a few, society agrees to give inventors an exclusive, but limited, right to exploit their inventions Đproviding incentive for future innovation. Patent regimes tend to vary a fair bit between nations. International agreements serve primarily to ensure that domestic patentees are not given preferential treatment.
   
• Trademark law is intended to protect companies' investment in the "good will" they develop in their name or mark and protect consumers from confusion.
   
• Copyright is more complex, providing economic incentives for creation as well as protecting authors' creativity as embodied in a work. Copyright is the exclusive right to copy a creative work or allow someone else to do so. It includes the sole right to publish, produce or reproduce, to perform in public, to communicate a work to the public by telecommunications, to translate a work, and in some cases, to rent the work.

Copyright applies to all original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works reduced to a fixed medium. These include books, other writings, music, sculptures, paintings, photographs, films, plays, television and radio programs, computer programs, and sound recordings (such as records, cassettes, and tapes).

Facts, ideas, themes, most titles, names, catch-phrases and other short-word combinations are not copyrightable. For more information, see: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/help/faq_cp-e.html

Despite the fact that there are international agreements intended to harmonize the rules for what constitutes intellectual property, there is still much variation among nations in the approach to IP disputes.

EiPN in the world