The notion of intellectual property as ‘ownership’ over an idea or expression is widespread, but the particulars are often misunderstood. This page is meant to be an introduction - top layer, simple, definitional - to orient those who may have not yet encountered the specifics of intellectual property.
What is intellectual property?
There are four types of intellectual property in the United States: patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. At PSU we use the first three types - as a university committed to letting knowledge serve the world, we do not deal in trade secrets.
Regardless of type, “intellectual property” is not an idea or expression that someone owns, but rather an ability given to individuals or institutions by governments to prevent others from doing some activity. This ability itself is what is “owned” when we talk about intellectual property ownership. Intellectual property can be thought of as a bundle of activity rights around an idea or expression that can be withheld or granted in strategic ways to achieve some goal centered on that idea or expression.
For example, the bundle of rights around a patent in the United States includes the ability to prevent others from using, making, selling, offering for sale, or importing a specifically defined idea (see patents for what kind of ‘ideas’ can be patentable). The bundle of rights around a copyright includes the ability to prevent others from copying, distributing, displaying, derivatizing, or performing a particular expression. The owner of these rights can prevent anyone else from doing these activities in order to do these activities themselves (see important caveat to this in the patents page), or can grant others permissions to do these activities. When the owner of these rights grants permission for others to do these activities, they are licensing these rights.
The licensing of these rights is the tool that IIP uses to promote the use and increase the impact of PSU innovations. For more on how this works, see the licensing page.
Each type of intellectual property has its own benefits and its own quirks.