Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is a creative work or invention that the law treats as belonging to its creator or owner. It is not a physical object: if you buy a copy of a book, you own that copy, but the story printed inside it is still the intellectual property of the person who wrote it. The law gives the creator, or whoever the rights have been passed to, the say over how the work may be used.

Why the law protects it

Creating something new usually costs a lot of time and money before it earns anything. A writer might spend two years on a novel, and a business might pay a team for months to develop a product. If anyone could take the results of that effort and use them freely, the creator would lose the income that funds the work, and fewer people would be willing to take the risk in the first place.

Legal protection changes that. It gives the creator or owner:

• Control over who uses the work and how, so unwanted uses can be refused;
• A way to earn income, because anyone wanting to use the work can be asked to pay, or to agree conditions first;
• A reason to keep creating, because others cannot simply take the results of their effort.

The benefit is not only for the individual creator. When people know they will gain from their ideas, they are willing to invest in new ones, so protection encourages creation and invention across society as a whole.

A worked example

Imagine you and three friends spend two years and your savings creating a set of characters and stories for a new children's magazine. A large publisher could print the same characters, sell thousands of copies and pay you nothing, leaving you without the money to produce the next issue. Because the characters and stories are treated as your intellectual property, you can decide who is allowed to use them and charge a fee for that permission. That income lets you carry on creating, and it gives other designers the confidence to invest in their own ideas too.