Intellectual Property Resources

Intellectual Property Resources

Intellectual property (IP) can be defined as creative ideas or products of the mind that possess commercial value and can be protected by certain legal rights such as patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights.

The term "IP" is often used interchangeably with the legal rights associated with intellectual property.

Most commonly, researchers deal with IP when they have developed something in their research that is useful for commercial application-licensing technology to corporations can be a useful source of income for institutions to support further research.

For those interested in obtaining a patent, some national/regional patent offices and large research institutions have specific divisions to help inventors through the process of filing for one.

However, another important reason for researchers to be aware of IP is that patent databases can contain knowledge that is complementary to the academic literature.