¶ … intellectual rights and how they apply to all aspects of the business cycle.
Intellectual Rights and the Business Cycle
Intellectual rights are something that almost every business today has to deal with in some form or other. While the concept is a relatively new one, it has, nonetheless, become a concept that no business today can afford to ignore. Intellectual rights can affect every part of the business cycle, and a company that ignores this issue does so at its own peril. Businesses can be forced out of business or find themselves in complicated legal trouble over intellectual rights if they abuse the intellectual rights of others. Businesses can also find themselves mired down in lengthy court battles and in financial peril if they ignore their own intellectual rights. This paper examines the issue of intellectual rights as they apply to all aspects of the business cycle.
What are intellectual rights? "Intellectual rights" is the term often used to describe the legal protections afforded to the owners of intellectual property. Intellectual property refers to a person or company's rights to intellectual capital; these rights can last for a specified period of time, or they may last indefinitely. Common types of intellectual property include:
Copyrights -- Copyrights are legal rights that give the owner the exclusive rights to control reproductions of works of authorship, such as books and music, for a specified period of time.
Patents -- Patents give the holder the exclusive rights to use and license of an invention for a specified period of time, usually twenty years.
Trademarks -- These are distinctive names, phrases, or marks used to identify products to consumers.
Trade Secrets -- Trade secrets are the result of a company keeping certain information secret, sometimes by enforcing a contract under which those given access to information are not permitted to disclose it to others ("Intellectual Property," 2003).
These rights are given or conferred on a person or company by law, and can be given, sold, rented, and even mortgaged (in some countries) to others for the time that the owner holds the intellectual rights to the intellectual property. However, unlike other types of ownership, the ownership of intellectual property often comes with limits, such as time limits. It is also important to remember that with intellectual property, it is only the rights to the property that are owned, not the property itself. So, for example, a person or a company may own the intellectual rights to a certain invention, but they only own the rights to the use and license of the invention, not the invention itself. This may make the term "intellectual property" a little bit misleading to some people. However, while the person or company has the rights to use and license certain intellectual works, those works are essentially the property of that person or company, even if this is not the case in actuality.
Intellectual property rights normally fall into either one of two categories. These categories are: 1) those that grant exclusive rights only on copying/reproduction of the item or act protected, and 2) those that grant not only this but also other exclusive rights ("Intellectual Property," 2003). The difference between the two categories is that a copyright would prevent someone from copying the design of something that he or she did not own the copyright to, but could not stop them from making that design if they had no knowledge of the original design held by the copyright holder. A patent, though, can be used to prevent a person from making the same design as the patent holder, even if that person had no knowledge of the original design. Patents, obviously, are more powerful than copyrights, and as such, they are also more difficult and expensive to obtain ("Intellectual Property," 2003).
The type and scope of intellectual property rights that a person or company holds can also vary depending on the type of protection obtained. Intellectual property law is generally divided into the types of subject matter that the laws cover -- inventions, artistic expressions, secrets, designs, etcetera. Intellectual property law regulates what people may legally do with these things. Normally, the only right that intellectual property laws convey onto a person or company holding those rights is the right to reproduction of whatever it is they hold the rights to. However, occasionally these rights extend to full exclusive use of the intellectual property. Intellectual...
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