Intellectual property rights are, by nature, territorial. This means that they are usually regulated at national level by each country and that protection is granted only within the country’s borders.

A trade mark is a sign that allows consumers to differentiate a company’s products or services from the ones of its competitors. A trade mark can be a word, numbers, drawings, symbols, sounds, smells and even colours.

Trade secrets are industrial property rights that protect confidential information and can be sold or licensed. For the information to be considered as a trade secret, it needs to be commercially valuable, known only by a limited number of people, and the company that holds the information needs to take reasonable steps to keep it secret. The most famous example of trade secret is the Coca Cola recipe.