Intellectual Property: The Practical and Legal Fundamentals

Abstract:     
This working draft updates an article intended to identify pitfalls for lawyers and would-be lawyers who are basically uninformed about various forms of intellectual property.

Clients ultimately decide how much protection they can afford and how much risk of infringement they can tolerate. But they must first be apprised of options and alerted to risks.

In that vein, the paper is primarily intended to facilitate comparison of alternatives for recouping costs of developing and marketing (not necessarily new) goods and services. Yet attention given to scope of protection unavoidably addresses matters central to assessing infringement risks.

Such a comparative approach is impossible in detailed treatments of individual IP topics. Moreover, the scope of this discussion in relation to its size dictates careful attention to the most important and durable aspects of the law.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 56

Keywords: copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, comparative IP options, IP risk, property

JEL Classification: K19, K29

working papers series