2. Intellectual property includes ideas, discoveries, writings, works of art, software, collections and presentations of data. Copyright, trademarks and patents exist to protect intellectual property. However, the easy and accurate duplication methods made available through IT can undermine such protection.

3. IP is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs.

4. TRADEMARKS protect words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services. Trademarks, unlike patents, can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in business. The roar of the MGM lion, the pink of the Owens-Corning insulation, and the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle are familiar trademarks. If you are an intellectual property owner, you should protect your rights. If you are a user, you should respect them. It is just as wrong to steal intellectual property as it is to break into a home, steal a car, or rob a bank. PATENTS provide rights for up to 20 years for inventions in three broad categories UTILITY PATENTS protect useful processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter. Some examples: fiber optics, computer hardware, medications. DESIGN PATENTS guard the unauthorized use of new, original, and ornamental designs for articles of manufacture. The look of an athletic shoe, a bicycle helmet, the Star Wars characters are all protected by design patents. PLANT PATENTS are the way we protect invented or discovered, asexually reproduced plant varieties. Hybrid tea roses, Silver Queen corn, Better Boy tomatoes are all types of plant patents. COPYRIGHTS protect works of authorship, such as writings, music, and works of art that have been tangibly expressed. The Library of Congress registers copyrights which last the life of the author plus 50 years. Gone With The Wind (the book and the film), Beatles recordings, and video games are all works that are copyrighted. TRADE SECRETS are information that companies keep secret to give them an advantage over their competitors. The formula for Coca-Cola is the most famous trade secret.

5. The term itself Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that, although the term intellectual property is in wide use, it should be rejected altogether, because it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." Stallman advocates referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warns against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term. Lawrence Lessig, along with many other copyleft and free software activists, have criticized the implied analogy with physical property (like land or an automobile). They argue such an analogy fails because physical property is generally rivalrous while intellectual works are non-rivalrous (that is, if one makes a copy of a work, the enjoyment of the copy does not prevent enjoyment of the original). Limitations Some critics of intellectual property, point at intellectual monopolies as harming health, preventing progress, and benefiting concentrated interests to the detriment of the masses, and argue that the public interest is harmed by ever expansive monopolies in the form of copyright extensions, software patents and business method patents. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes that "conflicts may exist between the respect for and implementation of current intellectual property systems and other human rights". It argues that intellectual property tends to be governed by economic goals when it should be viewed primarily as a social product; in order to serve human well-being, Imagine the time when men lived in caves. One bright guy—let's call him Galt-Magnon—decides to build a log cabin on an open field, near his crops. To be sure, this is a good idea, and others notice it. They naturally imitate Galt-Magnon, and they start building their own cabins. But the first man to invent a house, according to IP advocates, would have a right to prevent others from building houses on their own land, with their own logs, or to charge them a fee if they do build houses. It is plain that the innovator in these examples becomes a partial owner of the tangible property (e.g., land and logs) of others, due not to first occupation and use of that property (for it is already owned), but due to his coming up with an idea. Clearly, this rule flies in the face of the first- user homesteading rule, arbitrarily and groundlessly overriding the very homesteading rule that is at the foundation of all property rights. Other criticism of intellectual property law concerns the tendency of the protections of intellectual property to expand, both in duration and in scope. The trend has been toward longer copyright protection(raising fears that it may some day be eternal). In addition, the developers and controllers of items of intellectual property have sought to bring more items under the protection. Patents have been granted for living organisms, (and in the US, certain living organisms have been patentable for over a century) and colors have been trademarked.

6. Ethics The ethical problems brought up by intellectual property rights are most pertinent when it is socially valuable goods like life-saving medicines and genetically modified seeds that are given intellectual property protection. For example, pharmaceutical companies that produce, apply intellectual property rights in order to prevent other companies from manufacturing their product without the additional cost of research and development. The application of intellectual property rights allow companies to charge higher than the marginal cost of production in order to recoup the costs of research and development. However, this immediately excludes from the market anyone who cannot afford the cost of the product, in this case a life saving drug.

7. http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/ http://itgs.wikispaces.com/Social+%26+Ethical