Intellectual Property Rights or IPR are the formal legal rights that exist for some types of IP.  Many IPR, like patents, registered trade marks and registered designs are only granted following an application and examination process before the relevant intellectual property offices, like the UK Intellectual Property Office, the European Patent Office or the European Trade Mark Office.  Others, like copyright and unregistered trade mark and design rights exist automatically.  The difficulty with unregistered IPR, however, is that you usually need to provide a lot more evidence to a court of law to prove that you have those rights, and that can be very expensive.