In the world of legal speak; law does not always refer to ‘property’ as a particular material item. It can be talking about the interests and rights in the item. These rights and interests can be applied to an object such as a guitar, real estate such as an office building or to ideas and creations such as a book, play or music. The latter is often referred to as “intellectual property.”

Property often times is thought of as the right to exclude others. You may have an unobstructed right to use a public restroom without owning it; you may use it, although you may not keep out others from using it. In comparison, your front-yard is your property – you have the right to tell others to stay off it. If required, the state will send police officers to support you in implementing your right. That is, in a sense, the key to property, it is the right to exclude others.

Property rights in ideas can be disturbing.  How do you exclude someone else from using your ideas?  Thomas Jefferson thought ideas should be free, he wrote: “If the environment has made any one thing less vulnerable than all others of restricted possessions, it is the achievement of the accepted wisdom command called a proposal.”

However, Jefferson lost this debate. In the Constitution, a variety of state and federal statues, and the common law, inventions and works of authorship are sheltered and their owners have definite property rights – in essence, writers and inventors are, in certain circumstances, granted a form of government monopoly.

The natural law theory goes back to the view that property rights arise from labor and individual contributes to create the property. If an individual built an oak table, it is theirs; similarly, if that same person built a database, they might believe it to be theirs as well. The second justification is the economic incentive theory. By rewarding useful inventions and creations, the welfare of the community is increased.

Intellectual property generally includes trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, rights of privacy, publicity and patents. Each of these areas of the law has its own distinct characteristics although generally finding its conceptual basis in natural law or incentive economic theory.  Patents cover new and useful inventions so that other companies can’t make ‘rip-off’ or ‘knock-off’ copies of their products. Service marks and trademarks protect brand names against something that could ruin their bad reputation.

Trade secrets protect formulas or manufacturing processes from bring duplicated while copyrights protect an authors work from being copied and in this economy, it is very important to have these rules and safeguards in place.

Many attorneys who represent clients on intellectual property law advise their clients to register a logo, book, play, invention or idea both with their state and with the federal commission because a state will only protect the intellectual property in that state whereas the federal will protect it across all states. Worldwide international intellectual property rights are another matter altogether.