1. Can innovative ideas be protected by intellectual property law?

In intellectual property law, according to a jurisprudential expression, ideas are free to roam. In other words, ideas, whether innovative or not, are not protected or protectable by intellectual property law, not even by copyright, which is the most flexible. Moreover, there is no register of ideas.

This also applies to unpatentable concepts, industrial or technical know-how, commercial know-how and methods of any kind (economic, financial, commercial or teaching), whatever their value or economic interest.

In fact, ideas are not considered intellectual property, insofar as they are not always the result of creative or inventive activity, because they can be fortuitous and are, by definition, insufficiently formalized.

This can be verified by looking at the Larousse dictionary definitions of the idea: