In just sixty minutes, you’ll learn the language of intellectual property and come out knowing more than 90% of the general public.
Clear visuals and easy-to-follow examples will allow you to quickly understand the most important elements of intellectual property.
The lessons you learn in these pages will enable you to recognize new possibilities and turn your ideas into value.
Why You Should Care
Sharing ideas in exchange for a reward is a relatively new concept. This is a graph of the standard of living for the past 2000 years.
Two very important takeaways:
- A person living in the 1700s was not much better off than a person living in the time of the Romans.
- Things have gotten dramatically better since then.
What changed after 1700+ years?
What turned 1700 years of languish into the past few hundred years of progress? Intellectual property. Or rather, the creation of nationwide intellectual property systems that reward inventors for sharing their great ideas. Instead of keeping their ideas a secret, people shared them, and this led to more great ideas.
Enjoy your life? Thank Intellectual Property.
This system of sharing ideas in exchange for a reward drives innovation and is directly responsible for your standard of living today. How much is your great idea worth?
Intellectual Property
There are four main types of Intellectual Property that you can use to protect your idea. These are Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets.
Each type of intellectual property has its own use and set of advantages. You can think of them like tools. A screwdriver is great if you want to secure a screw, but not if you want to secure a bolt. You’d use a wrench for that.
Likewise, it’s important to pick the right type of intellectual property for the task.
Patents
Defined
Patents offer the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, importing, or offering an invention for sale over a fixed period of time.
Patents don’t actually give you the right to do something. They give you the right to keep others from doing that thing.
Examples
Eddie Van Halen’s Guitar Support
James Cameron’s Underwater Propulsion Device
George Lucas’s Boba Fett Action Figure
Mark Twain’s Self-Pasting Scrapbook
*all famous, inventors
Trademarks
Defined
A trademark is a word, name, symbol, or device that is used to indicate the source of goods or services and distinguish them from the goods or services of others.
Think of trademarks as adjectives. Just as you would use an adjective to describe a quality of an item, you can use a Trademark to describe the source of that item.
Examples of Trademarks
Aqua® (user interface)
Bonjour® (networking technology)
Chicago® (computer font)
Instruments® (developer software)
Keychain® (operating system feature)
Lightning® (connectors)
Logic® (application program)
Metal™ (software technology)
Spaces® (operating system feature)
*all trademarks of Apple Inc.
Copyrights
Defined
A copyright protects a work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.
Copyrights do not protect ideas, but they can protect how those ideas are expressed.
Examples of Copyrights
Book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone written by J. K. Rowling
Script: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by Steve Kloves
Movie: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone directed by Chris Columbus
Book: Harry Potter Page to Screen: The Complete Filmmaking Journey by Bob McCabe
*Harry Potter from book to script to movie to book
Trade Secrets
Defined
A trade secret is made up of secret, valuable, and protected information.
Trade secrets protect the information that gives you a competitive advantage.
Examples of Trade Secrets
Google’s search algorithm
The ingredients in WD-40
The eleven herbs and spices used by Colonel Sanders in KFC
The formula for Coca-Cola