For UNL Inventors

Intellectual Property Basics

Intellectual property refers to the fruit of the ideas of inventors, authors, artists, plant breeders and others. Intellectual property can be either an invention or an expressed idea that can be bought, sold or licensed. This “property” can be protected by patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks. These protections prevent the unauthorized manufacture, copying, use, or sale of the property in tangible form. Inventions are novel and non-obvious, and can be protected by patents. Expressed ideas consist of literature, music, art, software, etc. When these expressions are expressed in a tangible medium, they can be protected by copyright.

OTD works with you to ensure that your inventions and discoveries receive the protections they deserve.

A patent grants exclusive rights to an inventor, excluding others from making, using, or selling an invention covered by the patent. Patents are granted by governments or, as is true of the European Patent Office, by regional patent offices established by treaty. Generally patents may be enforced only in the jurisdiction that has granted them. Read more about:

U.S. Patents
Basic Patent Requirements
Terms of the Patent
Provisional Application
Foreign Patents

Copyright

Copyright is a form of protection available for eight categories of original works of authorship: literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pictorial and audiovisual works, sound recordings and architectural works. Copyrights are granted for the term of the life of the author and an additional 50 years, and give the owner the exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform or publicly display the copyrighted work, or to prepare derivative works based upon it. For specific information on copyrights, contact the U.S. Copyright Office.

Trademark

A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device that identifies a product or service with its source. Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark. Additional information on trademarks is available from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Plant Variety Protection

In the U.S., new plant varieties can be protected in three different ways:

• Plant variety certificates are issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture rather than the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. They protect sexually propagated plants, tubers and F1 hybrids. Plant variety certificates also have been expanded to include new plant varieties where the "essential biological characteristics" of the original variety are retained.
• Plant patents are issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. They protect asexually propagated plants, but tubers are specifically excluded.
• Plant utility patents are issued to protect sexually propagated plants, asexually propagated plants, tubers and F1 hybrids.

Other Types of IP

Trade Secrets refer to knowledge possessed by an individual or institution and kept secret to prevent others from using it competitively. Industry uses trade secrets to protect manufacturing processes and other technology where the details are not evident from an examination and analysis of the final product. The information protected by a trade secret does not have to be unique (like information protected by a patent), but it must be independently a secret. If someone comes up with the very same idea as your “trade secret,” you have no course of action. However, if the idea is stolen, legal recourse is available.

Know-how is specialized knowledge with commercial value possessed by one person or a few people, and often serves as a basis for consulting agreements in which fees are set for the services rendered. Some types of know-how also may qualify as trade secrets. Know-how also is involved in transfers of biological materials, engineering drawings and other property. Fees often take into account the value of the cost and time that would have been otherwise expended in reverse engineering and other methods to accomplish the same objective.