C. A power outage is an example of a man-made disaster. The other events listed—tsunamis,

In the United States, trademarks are granted for an initial period of 10 years and may be renewed for successive 10-year periods. Patents Patents protect the intellectual property rights of inventors. They provide a period of 20 years during which the inventor is granted exclusive rights to use the invention whether directly or via licensing agreements. At the end of the patent exclusivity period, the invention is then in the public domain available for anyone to use. There are three main requirements for a patent: The invention must be new. Inventions are only patentable if they are original ideas. The invention must be useful. It must actually work and accomplish some sort of task. The invention must be non-obvious. You could not, for example, obtain a patent for your idea to use a drinking cup to collect rainwater. This is an obvious solution. You might, however, be able to patent a specially designed cup that optimizes the amount of rainwater collected while minimizing evaporation. In the technology field, patents have long been used to protect hardware devices and manu- facturing processes. There is plenty of precedent on the side of inventors in those areas. Recent patents have also been issued covering software programs and similar mechanisms, but the jury’s still out on whether these patents will hold up to the scrutiny of the courts. One high-profile case involved Amazon.com’s patent on the “One-Click Shop- ping” e-commerce methodology. Amazon.com claims that its patent grants the company exclusive rights to use this technique. Arguments against this claim revolve around the novelty and non-obviousness requirements of patent law. Trade Secrets Many companies have intellectual property that is absolutely critical to their business and would cause significant damage if it were disclosed to competitors andor the public—in other words, trade secrets. We previously mentioned two examples of this type of information from popular culture—the secret formula for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s “secret blend of herbs and spices.” Other examples are plentiful—a manufacturing company may wish to keep secret a certain manufacturing process that only a few key employees fully understand, or a statistical analysis company might wish to safeguard an advanced model developed for in-house use. Two of the previously discussed intellectual property tools—copyrights and patents—could be used to protect this type of information, but with two major disadvantages: Filing a copyright or patent application requires that you publicly disclose the details of your work or invention. This automatically removes the “secret” nature of your property and may harm your firm by removing the mystique surrounding a product or by allowing