LEGAL CONCEPT OF PROPERTY:
What we call the law of property is, in its first place, the systematic expression of the degrees and forms of control, use and enjoyment that are recognized and protected by law.
An owner of property enjoys the following six rights viz;
1. Right to possess
2. Right to use
3. Right to enjoy the fruits
4. Right to enjoy incidental benefits
5. Right to dispose
6. Right to prohibit other

CLASSIFICATION OF PROPERTY:
Property according to traditional classification is either movable or immovable. Movable property is also called as Personal Property, chattels and goods etc. The Immovable property is also called real property and fixtures etc.
The other major classification of property is into private or public property. Private property is generally subject to an exclusive control of an individual. Public property is not subject to the exclusive control of any individual. Examples of public property include roads, railways, parks, lakes and public transport system etc.

In addition to the classification of property in the chart, in recent times many new forms of Intellectual Property have come into existence. They include plant varieties, plant breeder's rights, digital copyright and domain names etc. Many of the new forms are related to Information Technology (IT), Chemical Technology (CT), and Bio-technology (BT).

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY:
The concept of property has undergone a sea change especially after the Second World War. New rights and properties like patents, copyrights and industrial designs, which came to be known as Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) received attention due to their unique characteristics and the possibility of their violation easily. These Intellectual Property Rights differ from other forms of property because of uncertainties regarding their value and how they can be used. Intellectual Property Rights cannot be kept in a safe deposit vault or be deposited in a bank or locked up in a house. The said property whether in the form of a copyright, trademark or a trade name or in any other form is easily and readily available to the general public and is therefore prone to theft and exploitation.
Following are major heads of Intellectual Property Rights:

COPYRIGHT:
Copyright relates to artistic creations, such as poems, novels, music, paintings, cinematographic works, etc. In most European languages other than English, copyright is called author's rights. The expression copyright refers to the main act, which, in respect of the literary and artistic creations, may be made only by the author with his authorization. That act is the making of copy of the literary or artistic work, such as a book, painting, a sculpture, a photograph, a motion picture. The second expression Author's Rights refers to the person who is the creator of the artistic work, its author thus underlining the fact, recognized in most laws, that the author has certain special rights of his creation, for example, the right to prevent a distorted reproduction, which can be exercised only by himself, whereas other rights, such as the right to make copies can be exercised by other persons. For example, a publisher who has obtained a license to this effect from the author.
Generally speaking it is the expression of the author's ideas that is protected rather than the ideas themselves. For example, if an author makes an expose of his ideas on how to build a radio receiver, the copyright he has in his expose when published in the form of an article in a review will not prevent a third party from using the author's ideas to build such a receiver, but the copyright will protect the author against the reproduction of copies of his article without his consent. As for the invention, idea it does not enjoy copyright protection but may be protected on other grounds in the industrial property context. A fundamental point is that ideas, as such are not protected by copyright. Unless he has a Patent protection, a person who has made his ideas public, for example in a talk, has no means of stopping others from using it. But once that idea has been expressed in a tangible form a copyright protection exists for the words, musical notes, drawings, etc., in which it is clothed.
For a work to enjoy copyright protection, however, it must be an original creation. The ideas in the work do not need to be new but the form, be it literary or artistic, in which they are expressed must be original. It applies both to the substance and to the form. But on the latter point (the form of expression) the original character presents problems in certain cases. This is true for instance of artistic works (essentially paintings and sculptures) for which the exercise of copyright is to a large extent based on the display or sale of the original. The fact of the author allowing himself to be separated from the original should not mean that he has to forego subsequent profit. Thus certain legislatures give the author a share in the fortune of his work by creating a droit de suit, which allows him to collect a share of the selling price whenever the work changes owners.
The final fixation of a work in a material form (writing, printing, photography, sound or visual recording, sculpture, construction, painting, graphic reproduction, etc.) is not necessarily a prerequisite of protection. However certain countries notably those that follow the Anglo-American legal system, require mainly for reasons of proof, some fixation of the work before protection is assured.
The meaning to be given to the word publication has been subject of a good deal of controversy. There is agreement in general, on the fact that the distribution of the work has to be sufficient to meet the reasonable needs of the public, account being taken in that case of the nature of the work, as meeting the needs of the public is obviously not the same for books, for instance, as it is for discs or films. Certain acts (performance, recitation, broadcasting) are outside the purview of the publication concept, as they provide only as fleeting impression, whereas publication in a broad sense, that is, and not only by a graphic process causes material objects to be disclosed.
Finally, protection is independent of the quality or the value attaching to the work. It will be protected whether it be considered, according to taste, a good or bad literary or musical work and even of the purpose for which it is intended.
For the creation of an intellectual work, copyright is basically the right to respect for the creation and the right to derive profit from his work by collecting, for a limited period, the revenue generated by the use of his creative effort. Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of works or certain related acts are unlawful, except where the author or copyright owner has authorized them. These uses may for instance, include the copying or reproduction, in any manner or form, of any kind of work, the public performance of certain works such as musical or dramatic works or films, the broadcasting of all kinds of work by radio or television or other means and the adaptation of the work to another medium of mass communication. These uses are subject to prior authorization, in some cases the exclusive right of authorization, which belongs to the author or copyright owner, is replaced by a simple right to remuneration when the work is used and, in certain circumstances, its use may even be declared free by virtue of the law.
Rights are made to be respected and, if they are not, they are sanctions. Any unauthorized use of works protected by copyright, when authorization of such use is required by law, constitutes what is called a copyright infringement. Legislation specifies sanctions to remedy the prejudice caused by such infringements and the sanctions may be civil or criminal depending on the importance of the infringement or violation.
Finally, it is generally accepted that the whole set of prerogatives that constitute copyright has to be recognized and protected at least throughout the life of the author. After his death, his work constitutes in principle to be protected for a certain period of time. The specific character of literary and artistic property, which stems from the vocation of intellectual creation, namely to be disseminated, without hindrance in the interests of society and the enrichment of its cultural heritage led the legislator to moderate the exclusiveness of the rights to be conferred on the author's descendants for the exploitation of his work. The period is generally 50 years after the death of the author. This is regarded as being a fair balance between the preservation of the economic rights conferred on the author and society's need to have access to the expression of a culture whose essential aspects will have a more lasting effect than transitory successes.
On expiry of the term of copyright protection, the work falls into the public domain, that is, it can be used by anyone without any authorization. A mention should however be made in this connection of the introduction in certain countries of what is known as the “domain public payment”. This system requires users of works that are no longer protected nevertheless to pay a share of the revenue from exploitation of the work to an appointed body or competent authority. Sums collected in this manner are most often used for social welfare or cultural promotion purposes.

PATENTS AND RELATED CONCEPTS:
Patents for inventions: Inventions are characteristically protected by patents, also called “patents for invention”. Every country which gives legal protection to inventions and there are about 50 such countries, gives such protection through patents although there are a few countries in which protection may also be given by means other than patents.
The word “patent” at least in some of the European languages is used in two senses. One of them is the document that is called “patent” or “letters of patent”. The other is the content of the protection that a patent confers.
If a person makes what he thinks is an invention, he, or if he works for an entity, that entity, asks the Government by filing an application with the Patent Office to give him a document in which it is stated what the invention is and that he is the owner of the patent. This document issued by a Government authority is called a patent or patent for invention.
Conditions for patentability: Not all inventions are patentable. Generally laws require that, in order to be patentable, the invention must be new, it must involve an inventive step (or it must be non-obvious) and it must be industrially applicable. These three requirements are sometimes called the requirements or conditions of patentability. Furthermore the laws of some countries exclude certain specific kinds of inventions from the possibility of patenting, for example, inventions which are incorporated in substances obtained by nuclear transformation.
The conditions of novelty and inventive step must exist on a certain date. That date, generally, is the date on which the application is filed. However, in certain cases it will not matter if conditions no longer exist on that date. That case is regulated in the Paris Convention and concerns the situation where the application of a given applicant concerning the given invention is not the first application (or his successor in title) for the same invention. For example, the first application was filed in Japan and the second in France. In such a case, it will be sufficient that the conditions of novelty and inventive step exist on the date on which the first (the Japanese) application was filed. In other words, the second (the French) application will have priority over any applications filed by other applicants in France between the date of the first (the Japanese) and the second (the French) application, provided the period between the two dates does not exceed 12 months. Because of such priority, the advantage thus assured to the applicant is called “right of priority”.
Product and Process Inventions: It is customary to distinguish between inventions that consist of product and inventions that consist of processes. An invention that consists of a new alloy is an example of product invention. An invention that consists of a new method or process of making a known or a new alloy is process invention. The corresponding patents are usually referred to as a “product patent for invention” and a “process patent for invention”, respectively.
The protection that a patent for invention confers means that anyone who wishes to exploit the invention must obtain the authorization of the person who received the patent called “the patentee” or “the owner of the patent" to exploit the invention. If anyone exploits a patented invention without such authorization, he commits an illegal act. One speaks about protection since what is involved is that the patentee is protected against exploitation of the invention, which he has not authorized. Such protection is limited in time. In most countries it is about 14 or 20 years.
The rights and nature of protection are not described in the document called “the patent”. Those rights, the protection, are described in the patent law of the country in which the patent for invention was granted. The rights, usually called “exclusive rights of exploitation”, generally consist of

(a) in the case of product patents for invention, the right to make, use, sell and import the product that includes the invention and
(b) in the case of process patents for invention, the right to use the process that includes the invention as well as the right to make, sell, use and import products which were made by the process that includes the invention.
As mentioned earlier if anyone exploits the patented invention without the authorization of the owner of the patent for invention, he commits an illegal act. However, there are exceptions to this principle, because patent laws may provide for cases in which a patented invention may be exploited without the patentee's authorization, for example, exploitation in the public interest by or on behalf of the Government, or exploitation on the basis of a compulsory license. A compulsory license is an authorization to exploit the invention, given by a Government authority, generally only in very special cases, defined in law, and only where the entity wishing to exploit the patented invention is unable to obtain the authorization of the owner of the patent for invention. The conditions of the granting of compulsory licenses are also regulated in detail in laws, which provide for them. In particular, the decision granting a compulsory license usually ha to fix remuneration for the patentee and that decision usually may be the subject of an appeal. In conclusion, it can be stated that, among all the means by which inventions are protected, patents are by far the most important. In some countries there are also means other that patents for the protection of inventions.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS:
Industrial designs belong to the aesthetic field, but are at the same time intended to serve as patterns for the manufacture of products for the industry or handicraft. Generally speaking an industrial design is the ornamental or aesthetic aspect of a useful article. The ornamental aspect may consist of the shape and/or pattern and/or colour of the article. The ornamental or aesthetic aspect must appeal to the sense of sight. The article must be reproducible by industrial means, which is why the design is called “industrial”. If this latter element is missing the creation may rather come under the category of a work of art, the protection of which is assured by the copyright law rather than by a law on industrial property.
In order to be protect able, an industrial design must, according to some laws, be new and according to other laws original. Industrial designs are usually protected against unauthorized copying or imitation. The protection usually lasts for 5, 10 or 15 years. The document that certifies the protection of an industrial design may be a registration certificate or a patent. If it is called a patent, one must, in order to distinguish it from a patent for invention, always specify that it is a patent for an industrial design.
With the remarkable revolution in design art in recent years consumers have become more and more interested in a combination of utility and pleasing aesthetic appearance in the articles they buy. This tendency results in an increasing investment by manufacturers in design development and in a corresponding necessity to protect the result of their creative work through the registration of the relevant designs.

TRADE MARKS:
A trademark is a symbol, which is intended to indicate who is responsible for the goods placed before the public. There may be many makers or sellers of the same goods and they may all use different trademark. The public makes use of these trademarks in order to choose whose goods they will purchase. If they are satisfied with their purchase they can then repeat their order simply by using the trademark. It is not necessary that they know who actually owns the trademark. In other words they will distinguish between goods of competing traders solely by means of their trademarks. In order for this to work in practice, the trademark must not only be different, but they must be clearly distinct from each other. In other words, they must be “distinctive”.
Trademarks may take many forms. They may consist of a single letter or numeral usually presented in some fanciful or original manner. At the other extreme a whole sentence or slogan may be used as trademark. Many trademarks consist of pictorial devices without any words at all. Quiet a few trademarks consist of a combination of words and devices, perhaps on a label attached to the goods. Some trademarks are made an inherent part of the goods, for example, special moulding around the neck of the bottle. This example is important because the trademarks may be three-dimensional. Indeed bottles (and other containers) may come within the definition of a trademark subject to certain restrictions.
Service Mark: where a trademark is used in connection with services it may be called “service mark”. For example, hotels, restaurants, airlines, tourist agencies, car agencies, laundries and cleaners use service marks.

Purpose of Trademark: A trademark serves several purposes. For the purpose of guiding a customer in his decision to buy. Such decision is based on the expected properties of the goods (size, weight, colour, fragrance, taste, durability, degree of efficiency in the operations in which the goods are used etc.) in a single word one may say what the prospective buyer is looking for is a certain quality. So, one of the functions of a trademark is to convey a feeling of a certain quality.
A second function of a trademark is to allow the manufacturer of the goods to identify the goods, once they are no longer in its/his possession but already in possession of others, for example, the shops that it.
The third function of the trademark is that it allows the authorities responsible for controlling the quality of the goods sold under a trademark. All that one has to do to identify such owner is to look up in the trademark register, in whose name the trademark stands registered.
Lastly it is frequently said that the function of a trademark is to distinguish the goods of one entity from the goods of a similar kind of another entity. This is particularly true if the trademark consists of the name of the manufacturer or if the person looking at the trademark which manufacturer owns the trademark or if next to the trademark the name of the manufacturer is also indicated.
Naturally, trademarks may be used not only by the manufacturer of goods but also the entities, which are mere distributors. What has been said before in respect of the manufacturer will then apply to the distributor.
It is only in comparatively modern times that a trademark has come to be recognized as a species of property for which its owner can take steps to protect. A Register of Trademarks provides the source of this protection by:
(a) making proof of registration equivalent to proof of title in all legal proceedings and
(b) restricting to registered owners the right to prevent others from using their trademarks
without permission. The transfer from the customer to the proprietor of the right to stop deception caused by false marking has had enormous benefit and has led directly to an expansion of trade without any loss of consumer protection.
Trade names: “Commercial names and designations” constitute another category of elements of industrial property. Trade names are generally names, terms or designations, which serve to identify and distinguish an enterprise and its business activities from those of other enterprises. Whereas marks distinguish the goods or services if an enterprise, a trade name identifies the entire enterprise, without necessarily any reference to the goods or services it puts on the market and symbolizes the reputation and goodwill of the business as a whole. Thus, a trade name is a valuable asset for the enterprise it identifies. It is also useful to entrepreneurs and consumers so that trade names be protected and that legal measures be adopted to prevent the use of trade names in ways that are likely to confuse or mislead consumers.
Trade names are generally protected under most national laws. However, the legal regime governing the trade names varies considerably from country to country and might be determined by a combination of provisions of civil, commercial, company, trademark and/or unfair competition laws and/or special laws on trade names. Many countries provide for a registration system of trade names, although the systems vary significantly both as to their territorial scope (local and/or national) and the legal consequences of registration.
The principal reason for protecting trade names against infringement is that, if trade names are intended and understood to identify one enterprise and to distinguish its activities from those of other enterprises, the public might be misled into thinking that two separate enterprises using the same or confusingly similar trade names actually constitute one and the same enterprise. Such confusion is not only harmful to consumers but it might also permit the infringing enterprise to divert sales from the owner of the prior trade name and to benefit unfairly from the goodwill the prior trade name represents.

The essential feature of the legal protection of trade names is the prevention for the concurrent unauthorized use by an enterprise of a trade name, which is identical or confusingly similar to the trade name of another enterprise entitled to claim protection thereto.