A patent is a right granted for a certain territory which forbids a third party from exploiting the invention. In return for this right, the description of the invention is revealed in the patent. This exclusive right, however, is territorial and limited in time.

A trademark, trade mark or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indication used by an individual or a legal entity to identify that the products or services with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source. It serves to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.

A design right is an intellectual property right that protects the visual appearance of articles (or parts thereof) that are not purely utilitarian.

An important function of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and humanly memorable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the Internet.