Intellectual Property is the group of rights pertaining to intangible creations. Just as ownership of traditional "brick and mortar" property conveys certain rights to the owner, ownership of intellectual property conveys rights to its owner. Intellectual property conveys rights not to a physical object, but to the idea that was used to create that object. For example, intellectual property laws do not limit your ability to sell a book, but they would limit your ability to reprint the contents of the book.
Exactly what rights are created and are protectable? Because of the nature of intellectual property, unique rights and issues arise that do not apply to traditional property law. Intellectual property give inventors, authors, and other creators incentive to create and share their information rather than keeping it secret by allowing a system to protect their ideas so that they may profit from them. Logic dictates that if an individual will profit from his work exclusively, that individual will be motivated to produce more.
Traditionally, there are three types of intellectual property: