This contract tip is about the intangible nature of intellectual property (IP).
One of the hardest things to understand about IP is that these property rights are intangible. IP owners have rights to something that has no physical properties.
It isn't like property rights to land, where you can pick up a clump of dirt and say, “I own this.” It isn't like owning a car or a house, where you can see and touch what you own.
With IP, you just own rights. Even if we understand that concept, it is easy to get confused when we think about works protected by IP - a patent for a machine that filters water, a copyright in a painting hanging on the wall, or a trademark logo on a cup of coffee.
“But those are all tangible things that you can touch.” Yes, very true. But those are physical embodiments of the IP. Those objects are not the IP itself.
The IP owners own rights to do certain acts relating to that machine, that painting, or that logo. But the IP owner does not own each physical embodiment of those rights.
I think of IP like Schrodinger's cat. It has both tangible and intangible property elements at the same time.
How do you explain the intangible nature of intellectual property rights to people?
