Intellectual property is a broad concept that covers several types of legally recognized rights originating from some type of intellectual creativity or that are otherwise related to ideas. Intellectual property rights are rights to intangible things, i.e., ideas as expressed (i.e. copyrights) or as embodied in a practical implementation (i.e. patents). Fundamentally, intellectual property rights are rights in ideal objects, distinguished from the material substance in which they are instantiated. In today’s legal systems, the key forms of intellectual property are (i) copyrights, (ii) trademarks and (iii) patents.
