Social Responsibility: Intellectual Property Defined

(This article originally appeared in Knowledge Quest, Vol 34/No 1, Sept/Oct 2005, pp41-42.
Prepared for the Web with permission from the author.)

"Social Responsibility" recognizes the importance of information and the teaching of ethical behavior to a democratic society. This series of columns explains copyright issues to the clients of the school library media specialist: students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members.

As an educator who teaches students not to plagiarize, you find that you are asked questions about the rights of authors and creators. When a high school senior comes up to you and asks "What is the difference between intellectual property and copyright?" you realize that, although you know that copyright is one of the many intellectual properties, you are unable to articulate just what the differences might be. Given this, below is a quick look at understanding intellectual properties in today's world.

Intellectual property can be defined as "the fruit of one's intellect" (Wherry 2002, 1). Intellectual property laws, which provide protection for the owners of works, are found in the U.S. Code (Butler 2004). There are many different categories of intellectual property; for example:

• coyright,
• patents,
• trademarks,
• trade secrets, and
• brand names.

Each of these are briefly described below.

Copyright Defined

Copyright is a privilege of law, given to owners of tangible works. Under copyright law, the owner of a work has the right to take that work and reproduce or copy, distribute, publicly perform or display, and create derivatives of it (Butler 2004).

Patents Defined

Patents are governments grants for the monopoly of inventions. For a specific period of time (20 years in the United States) the owner of a patent is granted the right to be the only one to make, use, offer for sale, sell, or import a specific invention (United States Patent & Trademark Office 2005).

Trademarks Defined

Trademarks distinguish products from one another and include symbols, logos, sounds, and designs. Trademarks do not mean that another person or group cannot make or sell a product, just that others cannot make or sell a product with a particular mark on it. Examples of trademarks include the shape of some bottles (soda, syrup, and so on), colors (for example, PINK insulation), and the Apple logo (United States Patent & Trademark Office 2005; Butler 2004).

Trade Secrets Defined

Trade secrets are pieces of information that give one company an advantage over another. For example, a "secret" ingredient in a chocolate chip cookie recipe can be a trade secret (United States Patent & Trademark Office 2005; Butler 2004).

Brand Names Defined

Brand names are the names by which a particular product is known. Kleenex, Xerox, and Coca-Cola are all examples of brand names.

Interestingly enough, one work may be found under more than one intellectual property category. Let's take computer software for example. A piece of software can be copyrighted (creation of the software), patented (invention of a certain way in which the software interacts with the Internet), trademarked (red, green, blue, and yellow squares symbol used by a popular company), have a trade secret (how the software is encrypted), and have a brand name (Microsoft). There are also times when the issuance of one type of intellectual property may destroy another. An example of this is that the issuance of a software patent can destroy its trade secret. This is because patents are in the public domain, thus the trade secret would be open to any and all public scrutiny (United Staes Patent & Trademark Office 2005; Halligan 1995).

Hopefully, you now have a better grasp on intellectual properties. Be aware of one last thing as you study these--new technologies are growing at a quicker pace than are intellectual properties' laws. And if in doubt, consult your school library media specialist. She or he should be able to help.

References

Butler, Rebecca P. 2004. Copyright for Teachers and Librarians. New York: Neal-Schuman.

Halligan, R. Mark. 1995. "How to Protect Intellectual Property Rights in Computer Software." <http://my.execpc.com/~mhallign/computer.html>. Accessed 1 Apr. 2005. [This URL may be blocked by the district Internet filter.]

United States Patent and Trademark Office. What are Patents, Trademarks, Servicemarks, and Copyrights? 2005. <www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html#ptsc>. Accessed 1 Apr. 2005.

Wherry, Timothy Lee. 2002. Intellectual Property in the Digital Age. chicago: ALA.

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