
183
14
Intellectual Property Rights
Patents, Copyrights,
and Trade Secrets
An individual has certain intellectual property rights (IPR) that derive from a patent, copyright,
or trade secret. Such individual may wholly own them and do with such rights as they please, and
many do, via licensing them to various manufacturers and companies to produce and sell the prod-
ucts, allowing a royalty type of revenue to accrue to the initial owner. Inventions and their impend-
ing patents, copyrights on books, records and CDs, and trade secrets of a company are items in need
of protection. Protection through the law can be misunderstood, but is necessary to ...