Business people are familiar with tangible property such as real estate, equipment and inventory; IP may be less familiar but is often the most valuable asset of a modern company. Like tangible property, IP can be appraised, used as collateral for a loan or sold. IP law gives owners exclusive rights, such as the right to exclude competitors from producing a product, using a process, offering a service or using a name or logo. IP rights can be utilized to give a new business venture some time and competitive breathing room in which to develop a new market. By excluding larger, possibly predatory, competitors from the new market, those risking time and money in new development efforts can increase the likelihood of recouping the monies invested in a new venture.

Trademark law generally protects words, designs or combinations of words and designs (or other source identifiers) used by manufacturers, merchants, and service providers to identify their goods or services and distinguish them from others in the market place. Trademarks serve to preserve and focus good will in the market place. Trademarks do not protect a business idea or technological concept, but “trade dress”, such as the shape of the Weber® brand bar-b-que kettle, is protectable. Trademark rights are obtained when someone actually uses a mark in commerce. It is possible to obtain federal registration for a trademark. Federal registration provides many substantive and procedural advantages, such as incontestability after a mark has been registered for five years. It is highly recommended that a clearance search be conducted before adopting a new trademark; the search should include both federal and state records. It is also highly recommended that a trademark clearance search be performed prior to incorporating or adopting a “trading as” name, even if federal trademark registration is not sought. An outsider who owns a federally registered mark could, conceivably, prevent a Marylander doing business only in Maryland from using their own similar “trading as “ name, even if it was properly cleared through the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation.

Copyright Law protects against copying of creative, original expression set down in a tangible medium (such as the written expression you are now reading). Copyright protection is available for the mode of expression of an idea, but not the idea itself; thus protection is relatively limited in scope. For example, computer program code is copyrightable, but copyright protection does not extend to the method, operational concept or idea executed by the computer program. Text, artwork, sound recordings, motion pictures, videos, computer software, video games and web site content are also copyrightable subject matter.

Patent Law protects new, unobvious and useful inventions and discoveries such as machines for making things, articles of manufacture having new and useful features, chemical compositions, manufacturing processes and, more recently, computer software and methods for doing business. It is important to note that the granting of a patent does not grant a right to make, use or sell one’s own patented invention, since one may have obtained patent protection on an invention which infringes another’s patent.

There are three types of patents. Utility patents are appropriate for protecting a process, method, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter, computer software method or business methodology. The scope of protection provided by a utility patent is determined by prosecution before a patent examiner and can be either broad or narrow, depending on the content of the prior art and the creativity of the