This chapter provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented treatment of intellectual property (IP) for medicine and surgery. It clarifies distinctions between intangible IP and tangible property; maps the main legal regimes (patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets) to clinical innovation; and traces historical inflection points from Chakrabarty to the modern diagnostics decisions. Using examples from devices, diagnostics, and digital health, the chapter explains patentability criteria, the patent filing and examination process across jurisdictions, and strategies to draft, prosecute, and manage claims that align with clinical safety and regulatory realities. Protection and management topics include enforcement, research-use and regulatory safe harbors, licensing models, university–industry technology transfer, and portfolio strategy that integrates design, brand, and data assets. Ethical and professional issues—balancing incentives with access, conflicts of interest for clinician–innovators, and the special case of surgical methods—are examined with policy-relevant guidance. Finally, the chapter surveys future directions in AI-enabled and data-driven medicine, nanotechnology, and regenerative therapies, and outlines alternative innovation models such as patent pools and open collaborations. Throughout, practical checklists, tables, and exemplars ground doctrine in bedside and operating room realities, emphasizing rigorous disclosure, transparent safety learning, and equitable diffusion as core elements of responsible IP stewardship.