IP Protect Module entails identification and capturing of vital intellectual capital and knowledge developed by a company in the course of its operations. These critical intellectual capital or knowledge which contributes to overall competitive advantage of the company can be owned in the forms of patents, trademarks, copyrights, industrial designs or trade secrets depending on the nature of the knowledge. The challenge of IP Protect Module is to identify the sum total of knowledge or intellectual capital of an organisation, capture and codify the knowledge to become intellectual assets of the organisation and eventually selective protect the intellectual assets so that they become proprietary of the oganisation as illustrated by the Diagram 2.3.1 above

The Table below summarises the different categories of intellectual property assets protectable by the intellectual property system. In essence, intellectual property system protects intangible assets which are the fruit of creative or innovative capacities of the mind and grants the owner the exclusive rights to commercially exploit the assets for a limited duration of time.