SECAI Core · phase 4 of 15
Intellectual property
Data that is of commercial value and can be granted rights of ownership, such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- Intellectual property is commercially valuable information that someone can legally own: copyrighted text and code, patented inventions, trademarks, and trade secrets like formulas or source code.
- Example
- An engineer pastes a proprietary pricing algorithm into an external coding assistant to get it refactored. Depending on the vendor's terms, that code may now be retained, reviewed or used to improve the service, and the company has quietly exported its crown jewels.
- Why it matters
- AI systems both consume IP (training data, prompts) and produce it (generated code, content). Defenders must stop trade secrets leaking in through prompts and track who owns what comes out.
- Hook
- IP is value that can be owned, and a prompt box is a very easy way to give it away.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 4: Data Integrity, Governance, and Provenance
Once you know what data is, learn the principles that keep it trustworthy, traceable, and minimized throughout its lifecycle.
