Terms Commonly Found With Intellectual Property – Part 2

While we covered quite a few terms in our last blog post, there are still plenty of other legal terms and rights that are available to intellectual property. In our post this week, we are going to continue to focus on these terms and how they apply to intellectual property. Understanding the difference between these terms will help you gain a better understanding of which legal situation is going to be best for you and your creation.

The terms that we covered in the last post were the primary laws and protections that you can find with intellectual property, but the ones that we cover today will be a bit more obscure, but equally as important.

Independent Discovery

An independent discover is when an individual has developed a process or a product on their own, that has already been patented by someone else. This concept can be confusing because it’s difficult to determine exactly who the creator of an idea that has been created, individually, more than once belongs to. Even while you may have created the concept entirely on your own, if it’s already been patented, is it no longer an original idea? Thus begins the confusion with this particular part of intellectual property.

Reverse Engineering

While the prior term deals with ideas that have already been trademarked or patented, this term deals with the use of other products for the creation of new ones. When things are reverse engineered, the product or concept is dissected and viewed from reverse to see how it works. From there, the person using the reverse engineering is able to determine ways to improve the product or concept. This information could also be used to create another product or concept that does the same thing, in an entirely different manner.

Trade Secret

A trade secret is going to be any confidential information that is used in a process, method or creation of a product that someone has already patented and sold. It is kept as a secret in order to protect the creation from having any reverse engineering done on it or from anyone being able to utilize the technique or method to create their own version.

For the meantime, these are the terms that you ought to know about intellectual property in order to understand what it is that we cover moving forward. In the next couple of days we will continue to dive into intellectual property and the different ways that it is viewed legally and artistically. Make sure to tune into our blog post so that you can continue to develop an understanding.