Intellectual property, the product of creative and hard working people, needs to be protected in ways that allow creative people to benefit from their efforts. Engineers create and use intellectual property and manage knowledge to their own benefit, as well as to the benefit of their company and society at large. To help engineers understand intellectual property issues, the Committee on Issues Identification, of the Council on Public Affairs of ASME International, collaborated with the Committee on Public Information, of the Section of Intellectual Property Law, of the American Bar Association (ABA), to create an intellectual property guide for engineers. This guide is designed to provide a basic understanding of intellectual property issues, specifically those related to patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.
