Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

There is no particular category of intellectual property for results of research. If you set down some findings in a fixed form, such as a writeup of an experiment, you would have a common-law copyright in the wording, but no ownership of the facts, etc. that you may have discovered. There are four recognized kinds of intellectual property: patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. Discoveries of natural facts generally do not fall into any of these categories and ordinarily cannot be claimed as anyone's property. In sharp distinction, however, the words you chose to describe your work carry a common-law copyright and could perhaps be copyrighted under federal law, giving you enforceable property rights in that particular body of prose.