Intellectual property law addresses a wide scope of legal issues involving the rights, application, and registration of all forms of intellectual property ownership, including inventions, ideas, processes, data, formulas, trade secrets, trademarks, patents and copyrights.

The laws protecting intellectual property in the United States exist at both the state and federal levels. State laws cover a broad spectrum of intellectual property fields, from trade secrets to the right of publicity. The laws differ somewhat from state to state. At the federal level, the Constitution and legislation authorized under the Constitution deal exclusively with patents and copyrights, and partially with trademarks and related areas of unfair competition.