There are two primary rules of thumb for deciding if intellectual property protection should be pursued for a particular intellectual asset. first, a firm should determine if the intellectual property has value in the marketplace. second, a firm should determine if its intellectual property rightfully belongs to the firm or the employees who developed it could be licensed to another company is more than three years old is directly related to its competitive advantage is something that was developed "in-house"

directly related to its competitive advantage

Explanation:

Intellectual property is protected under four key forms:

Patents are only handed out if they are useful, new compared to prior arts, and they are not obvious to any person.

Trademarks are useful to identify the source of origin of products and to distinguish those products from others.

Copyright grants the owner of a work the right to determine how it will be used and to obtain economic benefits from it. Ideas cannot be protected under copyright law.

Trade secrets are obviously information not known by the general public and that information has economic value for a business.

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