Intellectual Property

BUL 2241Activity 12·9 min read

Why it Matters

Intellectual property protects the creative and inventive assets that give a business its edge, and those intangible assets are often the most valuable things a company owns. A logo, a product design, a piece of software, and a secret recipe are each protected by a different body of law with different rules for how protection begins and ends. The registrations behind most of them are public records anyone can search. This activity has you find IP in your own home, verify it in the federal databases, and test what the law says about a work a machine helped create.

Current Context

On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, leaving standing the D.C. Circuit holding that a work generated entirely by a machine has no human author and cannot be registered. The Copyright Office reached that conclusion first and has held to it, while registering hundreds of works containing AI-generated material where a human contributed enough expression, and requiring applicants to disclaim the machine-generated portions. Prompting is not authorship no matter how detailed the prompt, though creative arrangement or modification of an output can be. The Office’s ongoing artificial intelligence study is still working through the separate and unsettled question of whether training a model on copyrighted works is fair use. When you generate an image in Part 3 and ask who owns it, the answer as of 2026 is that you may own your contribution and nobody owns the rest.

Key Concepts

Copyright

Protection for original works of authorship, such as books, music, software, and films, from the moment they are fixed in a tangible form. Protection is automatic, but registration with the Copyright Office is required before an infringement suit can be filed. For an individual author it lasts for life plus seventy years.

Trademark

Protection for names, logos, and slogans that identify the source of goods or services. Rights arise from use in commerce, and federal registration adds nationwide protection against confusingly similar marks. A trademark can last indefinitely as long as it stays in use and its registration is renewed.

Patent

A time-limited right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention, granted only after an application proves the invention is new, useful, and not obvious. Utility patents cover how something works and design patents cover how it looks. The trade is public disclosure in exchange for roughly twenty years of exclusivity.

Trade Secret

Protection for confidential business information, such as a formula, a process, or a customer list, that has value because it is secret. No agency grants it; the owner keeps it by taking reasonable steps such as nondisclosure agreements and restricted access. It can last forever, but only as long as the secret holds.

Fair Use

A defense to copyright infringement that permits limited use of a protected work without permission for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and parody. Courts weigh four factors: the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, the amount taken, and the effect on the market. Businesses that comment, advertise, or create content rely on it constantly.

Infringement

The unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution of someone else’s protected IP, whether a copied invention, a confusingly similar logo, or a pirated video. The owner can sue for an injunction, seizure of the infringing goods, and damages. Remedies can be severe enough to end a business.

Human Authorship

The requirement that a copyrightable work originate with a human author. A work generated entirely by an AI system has no author and cannot be registered, while a work that includes human creative contribution can be, with the machine-generated portions disclaimed. This rule decides who, if anyone, owns the image you create in Part 3.

Resources

Very Brief Introduction: Intellectual Property (Professor Nate’s short overview of the four kinds of IP; watch it first.)
Textbook: Chapter 32 Intellectual Property (The assigned reading on patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.)
Patent Law, LawShelf (A free video course on what can be patented and how.)
Trademarks, LawShelf (A free video course on establishing and protecting a mark.)
Copyright Law, LawShelf (A free video course on copyright and fair use.)
Trademark Search, USPTO (The Patent and Trademark Office’s current trademark search system, which replaced TESS; use it to verify your trademarked item in Part 2.)
Search our trademark database, USPTO (The Office’s guide to searching, including how to read a registration record.)
U.S. Copyright Office Public Records System (The Copyright Office’s registration records; use it to verify your copyrighted item in Part 2.)
Patent Public Search, USPTO (The Office’s patent search tool; use it or Google Patents to verify your patented item.)
Google Patents (A free full-text patent search that is often easier to use than the official tool.)
17 U.S.C. § 102, Subject matter of copyright, Cornell LII (The statute that says what copyright protects and requires original authorship.)
17 U.S.C. § 107, Fair use, Cornell LII (The four fair use factors as written.)
35 U.S.C. § 101, Inventions patentable, Cornell LII (What kinds of inventions can be patented.)
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, U.S. Copyright Office (The Office’s reports and guidance on AI-generated works; the authority for Part 3.)
Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence (The Office’s rule on what must be disclaimed when a work includes AI-generated material.)
Trade secret, Cornell Wex (How trade secret protection works and how it is lost.)

What to Do

In this activity you hunt for physical examples of intellectual property in your own home, verify their registrations in the actual federal databases, and use an AI to explore who owns an image the AI generates. You post the photos, the screenshots, the image, and a short reflection.

Part 1: The Physical Scavenger Hunt

Walk around your home and identify objects that represent different types of intellectual property. Find and photograph one item protected by copyright (for example, a book, a video game case, or a DVD), one item bearing a registered trademark (look for the ® symbol on household goods or clothing), and one patented item (look for “Patent No.” stamped on a tool, appliance, or electronic device). You should end up with three separate photos. If you are curious why a company bothered to protect one of your items, the Protection Strategist will explain the business reason.

Part 2: The Public Database Verification

Verify the legal status of each item. Use the USPTO Trademark Search for the trademark, the Copyright Office Public Records System for the copyright, and Patent Public Search or Google Patents for the patent. The databases can be confusing, so use the Database Navigator to help you structure your searches, and confirm its advice against the official help pages linked in Resources. Take a screenshot of the official search result confirming the registration of each of your three items.

Part 3: The AI Copyright Experiment

The law on AI and intellectual property is still moving. Use the AI Ownership Explorer to discuss who owns an image generated by a machine and what the Copyright Office and the courts have decided. Check any case or decision the AI names against the Copyright Office’s AI page in Resources. At the end of the conversation, have the AI generate an image from a creative theme you supply (for example, a cyberpunk university library at night) and save it. If you want more practice, the Infringement Simulator runs you through IP decisions at a fictional company.

Part 4: Post Your Deliverable

Create a new discussion thread and upload your three item photos, your three database screenshots, and the AI-generated image from Part 3. Below the images, write a reflection of at least 100 words on your experience searching the government databases: what you learned, what challenges you ran into, and whether the AI gave you accurate legal context about the copyright status of the image it generated.

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Suggested AI Prompts

Use these prompts as a starting point, then adjust them to fit your goal. Strong prompting develops through trial, revision, and testing. It’s a foundational skill that grows into more advanced AI work such as context engineering and agent-based workflows.

Database Navigator

Act as a paralegal who specializes in intellectual property research. I need to look up three items in federal databases: a copyright in the U.S. Copyright Office Public Records System, a trademark in the USPTO’s Trademark Search system, and a patent in Google Patents or the USPTO’s Patent Public Search. Guide me step by step through each database: what to type in the search bar, how to filter results to a specific brand or patent number, and how to recognize the record that confirms a registration. If you are not sure how a particular screen currently works, say so and point me to the official help page instead of guessing.

Procedural guidance with an honesty clause. Government search tools change their interfaces, so the prompt asks the model to admit when its knowledge may be stale and to defer to the official help pages, which is exactly what a good paralegal would do.

AI Ownership Explorer

Act as an intellectual property law professor. Guide me through an interactive session on whether AI-generated images are protected by copyright under current U.S. law. Start by asking me what I think about authorship and AI use. Once I answer, analyze my thinking using current legal principles and explain who owns the copyright, if anyone, in an image generated by a machine. Describe the key decisions by the Copyright Office and the courts, naming each with enough detail that I can find it, and tell me plainly if you are unsure whether a decision exists or what it held. Then help me generate a creative image from a theme I give you, and explain what I need to keep in mind if I want to use or publish that image commercially.

Socratic opening plus a hallucination check. Asking for your view first makes the session a dialogue, and asking the model to name decisions findably and flag uncertainty is the responsible-use move in an area where models routinely cite cases that never happened.

Infringement Simulator

Act as an interactive intellectual property simulator for college students. Begin by inventing a fictional business in any industry and presenting a scenario with one or more IP problems, such as a patent dispute, a trademark infringement, or a stolen trade secret. I will play a decision maker at the company and choose how to respond. After each decision, give me immediate feedback: whether the choice was legally sound, a brief explanation referencing the relevant U.S. law, and a short rationale in plain language. Then advance the scenario with a new complication based on my choice.

Role play with a feedback loop. Each decision gets an immediate legal evaluation, so you learn the consequences of a choice in the moment rather than at the end, and the evolving scenario keeps the practice from repeating itself.

Protection Strategist

Act as a corporate strategy consultant. I am going to describe one of the physical items from my IP scavenger hunt: the patented item, the trademarked item, or the copyrighted item. Explain the business strategy behind why the company chose to protect that asset and how holding that specific intellectual property right gives it a financial advantage over competitors. Wait for me to describe my item.

Reframing from law to strategy. The same object viewed as a business decision rather than a legal category shows why companies pay for protection, which is the perspective a business student needs most.