Who makes IP?

Almost everyone is creating IP, all the time. If you doodle on a piece of paper, you've created IP (copyright). If your business has valuable confidential information that allows it to get ahead, then it has created IP (trade secrets). And if your business has been trading under a name that has now acquired a distinctive reputation in the market, then it has created IP (a common-law trade mark). Frequently, however, people and businesses set out to intentionally create IP as part of their strategy for creating and profiting from a product or service. 

The result is that almost any product or service on the market has some sort of IP associated with it, often more than one form of IP. For instance, a bottle of medicine might have a patent on the active ingredient, a registered trade mark for the name and logo of the company selling it, copyright on the package label and insert, and a registered design on the shape of the bottle or pills.