Why Intellectual Property is Often (Literally) the “Icing on the Cake”
I often tell my students that Intellectual Property is like the “icing on the cake”—the “cake” being the structure created by a product or service to which Intellectual Property law (IP) applies. As I will elaborate in a future post, this is one of the reasons why I like IP so much. In other words, while the technical application of IP is undoubtedly complicated and challenging, IP is often just the last step of a production or creation process. It is like the icing on a cake — that final layer that ties everything together. Yet this layer is absolutely necessary to complete the work and often represents the sine qua non of why the public will buy the cake. It determines whether a product will be successful or not. This post, however, is not about IP theory . . . it is really about cakes, icing, and IP.