Intellectual property (IP) is the term used to describe legal property rights over creations of the mind.  Owners of intellectual property are granted exclusive rights to those creations.  Intellectual property includes copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets.
•    Trademarks are words, names, logos, symbols or devices used in trade to indicate the source of the products or services and to differentiate them from others. Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a similar mark.  It cannot prevent others from making or selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark. Unlike patent and copyright protection, trademark rights can potentially be of unlimited duration, lasting as long as the mark is in use by its owner. Trademarks can be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
•    Copyrights give the creator of original works exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation; after which time the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete and fixed in a medium.
•    Patents are legal grants issued by a government permitting an inventor to exclude others from making, using, or selling a claimed invention during the patent's term. Patent applications filed after June 7, 1995, run 20 years from the filing date.
Intellectual property can describe a variety of intangible creations that may be seen as an asset to a person or business entity such as:
•    Discoveries or inventions
•    Words or phrases
•    Symbols, designs or logos
•    Literary works
•    Artistic works
•    Music or musical works
•    Ideas

Intellectual property rights are a bundle of exclusive rights over these creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial. Artistic creations such as books, movies, music, paintings, photographs, and software are protected by copyright laws.  The copyright holder holds exclusive rights to control reproduction or adaptation of their creations, ideas, or inventions, for a designated period of time. 
There are many reasons why it is important to understand intellectual property law:

•    Financial Gain
•    Technology Diffusion
•    Economic Growth

Because intellectual property rights grant exclusive rights to intellectual creations, owners reap monopoly profits.  This provides a financial incentive for the creation of intellectual property, and helps to pay research and development costs associated with creating artistic work and developing ideas or inventions.

In the cases that intellectual property is licensed or sold, there will be technology diffusion.  Conversely technology can also equally be prevented from being shared, should the intellectual property owner wish not to sell or license their technology.

Some economic growth can occur due to legal temporary monopoly granted by Intellectual Property laws.  Industries relying on IP law protection produce and estimated 72% more value per added employee than non-IP industries.