The term ‘intellectual property’ refers to creations of the mind. A business owner will have rights in tangible personal property – physical things such as inventory and office supplies – but they will also have rights in intangible assets. These could include one or more of the following:

• Trademarks identify an organisation as a source of products or services. The trademark can take the form of words, logos, shapes, colours and sounds or a combination of these.
• Domain names are a form of electronic address for a website.
• Copyright protects original works of creative expression, such as marketing materials, videos, songs, computer software and photographs.
• Design rights protect the overall visual appearance of a product.
• Patents protect inventions by preventing others from making or using the invention.
• A trade secret is information that has value to a business because it is secret.
• Databases (collections of data) can be protected by two separate IP rights. Copyright can protect the structure of a database. A separate ‘database right’ can independently protect a database if there has been a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting its contents.

The first five types are described in the next sections (links below), as these are typically the most important and arise more often:

Trademarks

Domain Names