The basics of intellectual property
Trademarks
Protect signs that identify the source of goods or services: names, logos, slogans, even colours, sounds and shapes.
- How you get it: registration (e.g. EUIPO, USPTO), and in some countries simply through use.
- How long: potentially forever, renewable every 10 years.
- Catch: use it or lose it, and don't let it become a generic word (see the Graveyard).
Patents
Protect inventions: new, inventive and industrially applicable technical solutions, from molecules to machines.
- How you get it: application + examination at a patent office (EPO, USPTO, national offices).
- How long: 20 years from filing, and only for as long as you keep paying the renewal/maintenance fees. Extensions are not exotic: US Patent Term Adjustment adds time whenever the patent office itself is slow (roughly two thirds of US patents get some), and Patent Term Extension (the American cousin of the European SPC) can add up to 5 years more after a long regulatory review.
- Trade-off: full public disclosure of the invention in exchange for the monopoly.
Copyright
Protects original creative works: books, music, films, software code, photos, paintings and more.
- How you get it: automatically upon creation, with no registration needed to own it.
- US catch: to sue over a US work you must register first. That is a precondition, not a perk (Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, 2019). And unless you registered within 3 months of publication, or before the infringement began, statutory damages and attorney's fees are off the table entirely.
- How long: typically the author's life + 70 years in the EU, the US and Switzerland, but the Berne minimum is life + 50, and a good number of countries stop there.
- Note: it protects the expression, not the idea itself.
Designs
Protect the appearance of a product: shape, patterns, ornamentation: the way something looks, not how it works.
- How you get it: registration (e.g. EU registered design, US design patent); the EU also protects unregistered designs briefly.
- How long: entirely a question of where. EU and Switzerland: up to 25 years, renewed in 5-year blocks. US design patent: 15 years from grant, with no renewals and no maintenance fees (14 years if the application was filed before 13 May 2015).
Trade Secrets
Protect valuable confidential information: recipes, algorithms, processes, customer lists: anything with value because it's secret.
- How you get it: no registration, just keep it genuinely secret with reasonable measures (NDAs, access controls).
- How long: as long as it stays secret. Coca-Cola's formula has managed since 1886.
What have you made?
Point at the thing. The right current lights up.
Trademark claimed. Used with unregistered marks; no registration required.
Registered trademark. Only for marks actually registered; misuse can be unlawful.
Copyright. An optional notice; the right exists even without the symbol.
Service mark. The ™ equivalent for services, mostly seen in the US.