Intellectual Property (IP) is a term for a variety of creations of the mind including art, literature, industrial designs, technical inventions, trade names and images.
Intellectual Property Right(s) (IPR) is a term used to differentiate IP that is legally protected and IP that is not (yet) protected. For example, if you own a small shop your business name is your IP. As soon as you successfully register that name as a trademark, your business name becomes an IPR.
The main types of IPRs to consider are patents, trademarks, copyright, (registered) designs, plant protection and trade secrets.
What creation is protected by which Intellectual Property Right?
Patents: protection of technical solutions to technical problems.
Trademarks: protection of distinctive identification of a product or a service, such as a trade name or a logo.
Copyright: protection of artistic expressions such as literature, paintings, photography, music, video, choreography, and the like.
(Registered) designs: protection of functional/useful designs which offer more than just a certain appearance or aesthetic, such as a smartphone design.
Plant protection: protection of new and distinct plant varieties created through cross-breeding.
Trade secrets: protection of valuable information and know-how kept secret by means of reasonable efforts.
A tasteful example
To put the different kinds of IPRs in perspective, what kind of IPRs could there be in a jar of strawberry jam?
Let’s start with the recipe. Perhaps you use different strawberry varieties in your recipe. To enhance certain flavors, you add one of the varieties later in the process. It’s that little detail that makes your jam tastier than others. There is only one person in the factory that knows this little detail, so you might keep this as a trade secret.
Among those varieties, one of them is a special breed that you created in collaboration with the farmer supplying the strawberries, so there is your plant protection.
For that special breed, in your jam factory you have a unique kneading machine that solves the issues you encountered with the tougher skin of the strawberry. It was an investment, but at least you got a patent on this machine.
This delicious strawberry jam has to have a proper packaging, right? So you have this odd-shaped jar, with a unique strawberry image and a fitting product name. You might have guessed it, but you got the design, copyright and trademark rights on your product as well.
As you can see, even something as simple as a jar of strawberry jam might contain more IPRs than you would initially have thought about!