What are the types of intellectual property protection?

The two main categories of Intellectual Property rights are:

• Industrial Property – patents, trademarks and industrial design;
• Copyright & Neighbouring Rights – authors works and performance of such works.

Besides the traditional intellectual property rights, companies also resort to trade secrets, which can be used to protect inventions and know-how the lifespan of which is either too short to seek for patent protection (e.g. many IT creations) or too long to benefit from relatively short patent protection (20 years after which the invention goes into public domain).

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