Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the legal rights given to creators over their creations. They include patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. IPRs give creators the exclusive right to use their creations for a certain period of time. This allows creators to benefit financially from their creations and to prevent others from copying or using them without their consent.

There are four main types of IPR:

• Patents: Patents protect inventions and give the inventor the exclusive right to make, use, sell, and import the invention for a period of 20 years.
• Copyrights: Copyrights protect original works of authorship, such as books, music, movies, and software and give the copyright holder the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, and create derivative works of the copyrighted work.
• Trademarks: Trademarks protect words, symbols, or designs that are used to identify the source of goods or services and give the trademark owner the exclusive right to use the trademark in connection with the goods or services that it identifies.
• Trade secrets: Trade secrets protect confidential business information, such as formulas, recipes, and customer lists and are not registered with any government agency, but they’re protected by law if they’re kept confidential.

When using overseas manufacturing to develop and produce products for import into the United States, it's important to include IPR protections into the negotiations. Many of the nations that the U.S. has trade agreements with include specific clauses that protect IPRs on both sides of the trade.

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