This chapter considers how intangible assets that businesses develop, such as inventions, designs and brands, as well as business ideas and information, can be protected pursuant to Australian intellectual property (IP) laws. It identifies that various IP rights are protected by statute, while others are protected pursuant to common law. It explains that some forms of intellectual property require businesses to apply and register for protection before an IP right can be claimed, such as designs, patents and trade marks, while others, such as copyright, dont require any application or registration. The chapter highlights that an array of IP rights can be used to protect different aspects of a business’s goods and/or services. For example, a business’s product might have a patent that attaches to it regarding how it works, a registered trade mark protecting its brand name, and a design for its appearance. The more IP rights that can be used to protect a particular good or service, the more defiant the good or service will be to imitation and competition.

This chapter brings together several objects that demonstrate the reach of Jingdezhen’s ceramics, and shows the ways in which local producers of porcelain connected to consumers distributed throughout the empire and far beyond. Drawing on a shared set of raw resources and skills, workers throughout the wider network of Jingdezhen's production could easily adjust the quality of the goods they produced. By using more refined clay, higher quality cobalt, or more skilled painters, the quality could be more easily guaranteed; by using less carefully prepared clays, more diluted cobalt, less well-trained craftsmen, or by firing the goods in more densely-packed kilns, one could save on expenses and produce lower quality goods. While the manufacturers catered to the demands of different consumers and diverse markets, they were able to create both cohesion and diversity. The focus on a single design element, the motif of deer set in a natural landscape, demonstrates both a visual coherence that suggests interaction and adaptation that suggests a constant process of translation and transformation.