Miami University

Intellectual Property

Black’s Law Dictionary defines intellectual property as “a category of intangible rights protecting commercially valuable products of the human intellect.”  Generally speaking, the most common intellectual property rights involve trademarks, patents, copyrights and trade secrets.  Information regarding each of these categories can be found below.   

Intellectual property rights are a tremendously important part of the modern business and educational worlds.  In fact, the University is both an owner of numerous intellectual property rights and is also a licensee of many third-parties’ rights. 

Intellectual property rights are very valuable to their owners because they derive license fees from their usage.  Moreover, federal and state law provide intellectual property owners with powerful legal tools to penalize unauthorized use of their intellectual property, including the possibility of treble damages and recoupment of attorneys’ fees.

Accordingly, it is very important that the University properly use the intellectual property rights of third-parties and that the University protect its own intellectual property.  The University’s policies regarding intellectual property can be found at Section 15.6 of the Miami University Policy and Information Manual.

• Patent
• Copyright
• Trademark