Intellectual Property Markets: It’s Off to the Races (.PDF Download)

Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are hardly new. Trademarks came first, in the 1200s in England. Patents were next, in the 1400s in Italy. Copyrights emerged in the early 1700s in England. For the United States, laws passed in the 1790s protected patents and copyrights. Trademark laws arrived in the 1870s following legislative activity throughout Europe. These are the three primary types of intellectual property (IP) that can be “registered” with governments for protection. Each are made public, and available statistics for all countries make it possible to track global activity.