Intellectual Property (IP) Glossary Definition

Intellectual property traditionally includes assets that are protected through regulatory methods such as patents, copyrights and regulatory licenses; however, this protection is being expanded to include software and business processes when these can be demonstrated to be original, novel and non-obvious. Customer intelligence and business intelligence may be considered intellectual "property" by its owner, depending on its value to enterprise competitiveness and its integration into business processes.

In enterprise and customer-service systems, this term helps business and technical teams describe configured processes, transactions, customer interactions, service workflows, or platform behavior. It is relevant when implementing, documenting, supporting, or improving operational systems.