Intellectual Property

My definition of intellectual property is the ownership of a person's own ideas. After searching the term on Google I came across a good expert definition on The United States Patent and Trademark Office's website. They defined intellectual property as imagination made real. It is ownership of dream, idea, an improvement, an emotion that we can touch, see, hear, or feel. It is an asset just like your home, your car, or your bank account. There are multiple examples of this in academic and everyday life. In everyday life a person may come up with a funny joke then a few days later their friend uses the same joke. A person may find themselves claiming the joke is theirs after their friend uses it. In academic life a person may create a hypothesis about something, they then can create an experiment to test it. This whole process is their academic property because they came up with the idea and tested it. When intellectual property is shared or manipulated I think that it becomes less personal. The person who originally came up with the idea can feel less ownership of it, especially when they are not given credit.