What such of intellectual property that can be protected?

Answer 1

Trade secret protection comes closest because you can require confidentiality agreements with anyone who wants to know the idea.

Patents do not protect ideas -- only inventions that incorporate ideas.

Copyrights do not protect ideas -- only the creative work of authorship describing those ideas or an invention using those ideas. However, if you were to misappropriate and publish a description of a trade secret, you could be sued for copyright infringement. Good question of how the "damages" would be calculated, as infringement of the copyright is separate from the value of the "idea".

Answer 2

Intellectual property covers a wide range of literary, artistic and scholarly work--from books and short stories, to academic monographs, to treatments, plays and screenplays, musical works, and artistic works--the list goes on. In short, any original work that you create--including an invention--can be protected through various avenues: copyright (for original books, stories, academic monographs, music and choreography, film and photos, plays and screenplays); trademark (a registration that identifies an entity's products or services as specific to that entity--it is identified as an "R" in a circle); patents (which cover mostly inventions, but can include updates to a specific invention that already exists) and even industrial design rights and trade secrets (like Coca-Cola's secret formula). Once you register intellectual property, you own the rights to it. You can sell or license (for a limited time) those rights as you and the buyer see fit, according to the contractual terms that you both agree to. For example, Marvel Comics owns the rights to its characters (like Spiderman and the X-Men) but they have licensed them out to Fox and Sony to make films, even though they are now affiliated with Disney and can make their own films. (At the time they originally licensed the characters, they were solely into print media--they published comic books.) As such, even though they own the rights to the characters, they cannot make movies with them at the moment because the licenses for that purpose are still being held by the other two film companies. That's why, for the time being, the X-Men, Spiderman, and the Avengers won't meet--until (or unless) Marvel renegotiates its agreement with the other two companies and they come to a mutually agreeable understanding.