Intellectual property protection has become increasingly popular over the last century. Many factors have fueled the interest in this area of ​​law. Some of these factors include musicians seeking to protect their musical talent through the use of copyrights, companies seeking to protect inventions with advanced manufacturing capabilities, companies creating brands that differentiate their unique products from the competition, and companies such as Coca-Cola who protect their undisclosed ingredients for their products through the use of trade secrets. These examples serve to understand how and why intellectual property rights help companies seek advantages in the market. Furthermore, as the world shrinks due to advances in transportation and information technology, intellectual property rights become an important part of entrepreneurship and product development. This article will discuss the interesting and challenging topic of intellectual property protection. The four basic types of intellectual property include copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets; we will discuss intellectual properties in the order in which they are listed. COPYRIGHT: A copyright prohibits the unauthorized reproduction of creative works such as books, magazines, poems, drawings, paintings, musical compositions, sound recordings, films, and DVDs (Barnes , Dworkin, & Richards, 2011). Although many people archive, copyrights do not require any special archiving or process other than personal creativity, copyrights are formed automatically. Any creative work created before 1978 has existed for 75 years. Creative works created after 1978 exist for the life of the author plus an additional seventy (70) years. Copyrights are attributed to an author/created...... middle of paper ......expand abroad, many companies discover that companies with the same brand already exist. However, focusing on the domestic market, trademark infringement recovery must demonstrate that (1) you own the trademark; (2) the defendant has used the mark in commerce; (3) the defendant's use of the mark was intended to take advantage of it; and (4) the infringer confuses customers (Barnes, Dworkin & Richards, 2011). As China expands industrially and technologically, many US and European companies fear trademark infringement. Most large companies have done well in establishing and maintaining international trademark protection (e.g., Coca-Cola, Apple, and McDonald's), while small and medium-sized businesses struggle with imitative goods and services. Lest there be any confusion, trademark infringement occurs nationwide with products like Nike footwear and Ralph Lauren apparel.