Classic intellectual property programs involve the careful use by businesses of the varied legal protections provided by the patent, trademark, copyright, and associated laws. While the legal protection provided by these laws can be formidable, these legal regimes all have one requirement in common: the materials, ideas, concepts, inventions, designs, or other commodities being protected must all necessarily be disclosed to the public, including to competitors, in order to become protected by these laws:

• In the arena of patent law, protection is provided based on filings with the U.S. government. The degree of protection is predicated on what is filed. To put it in an overly simplistic manner, if you do not file it (where it can eventually be reviewed by the public), you cannot protect it. In addition, patent protection itself eventually terminates after a period of time.

• In the arenas of trademarks, service marks, copyrights, and the like, your firm must openly claim a right to use the protected works, designs, and so on. This is accomplished both by using them and by marking them with distinctive marks, such as ™, ©, ®, or the equivalent in words. In addition, there may be special filing requirements, again on the public record. These actions then establish your claims to legal protection. However, the entire process occurs in public, not in private.

Thus, it can be seen that these legal regimes do not impede CI data collection efforts. In fact, the use of these protections is actually antithetical to protecting data from CI activities because they all mandate some degree of public disclosure to secure legal protections.