ABSTRACT
Intellectual property (IP) law is a major discipline within the law. The treatment in this chapter is only intended as an overview and an opportunity to explore some practical issues that will emerge for those involved in buying knowledge. Copyright is, primarily, a right not to be copied without permission. It protects the form in which ideas are expressed, but not the ideas themselves. It gives legal rights to the creators of certain kinds of material (or their employers) so that they can control the various ways in which their material may be exploited. To determine the extent of international copyright it is necessary to look at the membership of relevant multilateral IP conventions. A patent is a grant by a government of monopoly rights for a period (in the UK) of up to 20 years in return for full disclosure of an invention.
