Questions of Copyright Questions of Copyright Another Weapon in Property Arsenal .
Copyrights are a third weapon in a company's intellectual property arsenal.
Originality requires that work be created through the independent effort of the author. Abstract ideas, processes, methods of operation, facts or utilitarian objects are not susceptible to copyright protection, but may sometimes be protected by trade-secret law or patent law. Protection of Expression. Copyright protects only the manner in which an idea is expressed, not the idea itself. A copyright owner has the exclusive right to copy, publicly perform and distribute the copyrighted material and to prepare derivative works.