Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property ("IP") lawyers deal with inventions, creations, and other "intellectual" and intangible types of property. The term "intellectual property" is used in its general sense to describe: "A product of the intellect that has commercial value, including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works and ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods, and industrial processes."
Examples of intellectual property are music, books, movies, artwork, product names, logos, slogans and packaging, inventions that qualify for patent prosecution, and information that is kept secret and not commonly known.
When people think of IP lawyers, they usually think of patent attorneys, which is no surprise given that a good majority of IP lawyers are patent attorneys. Patent attorneys, however, are not the only types of IP attorneys. Under the umbrella of IP lawyers also fall trademark, copyright, trade secret, and Internet/e-commerce attorneys. These areas of intellectual property are often categorized as "soft IP."