Patents, trademarks and copyrights are different aspects of a single idea. They are different types of intellectual property that protect the rights of the owner of a creation. However, these three have certain marked differences.

One of the important differences is that the patents essentially secure the physical or conceptual inventions, while copyrights secure literary, artistic or other such works. A trademark, on the contrary, can be a word or a logo that can distinguish products of one firm from the others.

Secondly, patents are the strongest forms of IPR, particularly because they are guided by strict rules and regulations. This is to say that even if the offender has no real knowledge of the infringement, he will be liable for the same. Thus patents offer greater safety against infringement, on the other hand copyright and trademarks offer for fair use and other exceptions.

A patent is usually valid for 20 years and then it switches from exclusive ownership of the patent owner, and the public is free to use that invention from that point. Whereas, trademarks continue for an infinite duration while copyrights are usually valid for 60-70 years from the date the work was created. Moreover, patents are capable of protecting your creation in a much more exhaustive way. This means that where copyrights protect only the expression of a particular idea, patents cover the processes as well as the basic principles behind an invention.

Lastly, since there are varying levels of safety provided for by these three IPR mechanisms, the procedure for submitting an application for them is also very different from each other. For instance, the application for a patent has to have an appropriate disclosure of the product, on the other hand the one for copyright needs enclosing a replica of the work itself, and the one for trademark simply needs a proper search for similar marks in the market.

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