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intellectual property Definition

intellectual property

noun

something produced by the mind, of which the ownership or right to use may be legally protected by a copyright, patent, trademark, etc.

intellectual property Finance Definition
The knowledge of how to develop products or processes. Typically intellectual property is protected by patents, trademarks, or copyrights.
Intellectual Property (IP) Hacker Definition

(legal term)

A legal concept that treats and protects the creative products of the human mind as carefully as the law would treat and protect one’s physical property, such as a home and the land that it sits on. In short, IP laws grant certain kinds of exclusive rights to the developers of creative products such as software, games, hardware, movies, books, songs, and so on. According to IP laws, the developers of creative products should have the first rights to the sale and/or distribution of these products, just as an owner of a property should have the first rights to the sale and/or distribution of his or her property.

A number of cases have been publicized in recent years regarding infringements of IP, particularly around online song swapping and the denial of royalties to artists. An alleged crime against IP does not always have an artistic aspect, however. For example, on February 3, 2005, Andrew Mata, a government employee charged with cracking the Department of Social Services Website in 1999, was cleared by a jury of any wrongdoing. Though Mata was charged with illegally entering the computer system to upgrade his access privileges after he left the Department of Social Services for a job in the Department of Health and Hospitals—a crime, it was argued, against Intellectual Property—Mata said in his defense that he changed his access back to where he thought it should have been when he moved to the Department of Health and Hospitals, though he was supposed to have the same privilege status on both departments’ computer systems. The jury believed Mata. He walked away from a potential five-year jail term.

See Also: Computer; Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Infringement; Property Paradigm in Cybercrime.

Schell, B.H. and Martin, C. Contemporary World Issues Series: Cybercrime: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004; The Associated Press. State Worker Acquitted of Hacking Government Computer. [Online, February 3, 2005.] Tuscaloosa News Website. http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs/d11/article?AID=/20050203/APN/ 502030742.
intellectual property Telecom Definition
Property derived from the work of human intellect. Intellectual property laws cover a wide range of property created by artists, authors, inventors, and musician, and protect copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. See also copyright, patent, and trademark.
intellectual property Usage Examples

Preposition: of

  • other: Terms and Conditions Ownership and Copyright Aurum Ecology respects the intellectual property of others, and we request our visitors to do the same.

Converse of object

  • protect: In particular, we need more cooperation from service providers and music distributors to help protect intellectual property and contain piracy.
  • respect: Terms and Conditions Ownership and Copyright Aurum Ecology respects the intellectual property of others, and we request our visitors to do the same.
  • produce: UCL seeks to promote the recognition, protection and exploitation of potentially valuable intellectual property produced by its students.
  • sell: Such processor designs are often called IP cores, because you you are actually selling intellectual property ( IP ) rather than anything tangible.

Adjective modifier

  • valuable: UCL seeks to promote the recognition, protection and exploitation of potentially valuable intellectual property produced by its students.
  • non-contentious: He is involved in a broad range of contentious and non-contentious intellectual property, IT and commercial media work.
  • corporate: Employers must be able to thwart the sharing or selling of trade secrets and other matters of corporate intellectual property.
  • underlying: In 1998 CAT acquired rights to novel polysome display technology and underlying intellectual property through the acquisition of Aptein Inc. , a US company.

Preposition: in

  • software: For further guidance on intellectual property in software and datasets please refer to Annex 3. iii.