Unlike selling or transferring a patent to another party, the licensor continue to have property rights over the patented invention. Patented inventions have, in fact, pervaded every aspect of human life, from electric lighting patents held by Edison and Swan and plastic patents held by Baekeland , to ballpoint pens patents held by Biro , and microprocessors patents held by Intel, for example. Patents provide incentives to and protection for individuals by offering them recognition for their creativity and the possibility of material reward for their inventions.
Once knowledge is publicly available, by its nature, it can be used simultaneously by an unlimited number of persons. While this is, without doubt, perfectly acceptable for public information, it causes a dilemma for the commercialization of technical knowledge. As a consequence, inventors would naturally be discouraged to bring new inventions to the market, and tend to keep their commercially valuable inventions secret.
A patent system intends to correct such under-provision of innovative activities by providing innovators with limited exclusive rights, thereby giving the innovators the possibility to receive appropriate returns on their innovative activities.
These incentives and the dissemination of knowledge about new inventions encourage further innovation, which assures that the quality of human life and the well-being of society is continuously enhanced.
There are numerous conditions that must be met in order to obtain a patent and it is not possible to compile an exhaustive, universally applicable list. However, some of the key conditions include the following:. A patent is granted by a national patent office or by a regional office that carries out the task for a number of countries. Currently, the following regional patent offices are in operation:.
Under such regional systems, an applicant requests protection for an invention in one or more member states of the regional organization in question. The regional office accepts these patent applications, which have the same effect as national applications, or grants patents, if all the criteria for the grant of such a regional patent are met.
In general, applicants can prepare their patent applications and file them without assistance from a patent attorney. Furthermore, the legislation of many countries requires that an applicant, whose ordinary residence or principal place of business is outside the country, be represented by an attorney or agent qualified in the country which usually means an agent or attorney who resides and practices in that country. Information on the qualified attorneys and agents can be obtained directly from national and regional IP offices.
The costs vary considerably from country to country and even within a country. As the official fees vary widely from country to country, please contact the relevant national or regional patent office which will be able to give you details on the fee structure. Consult our list of national and regional intellectual property offices. Some countries offer discounts to small- and medium-sized enterprises and applicants filing the application online. In addition, some countries allow expedited examination upon payment of additional fees.
In addition to the national official filing fees, once a patent is granted by the patent office, you must pay maintenance or renewal fees, generally on an annual basis, to maintain the validity of the patent. In case you decide to patent your invention abroad, you should also consider the relevant official filing fees for each country in question, the translation costs, and the costs of using local patent agents, which is a requirement in many countries for foreign applicants. In general, an application for a patent must be filed, and the patent granted and enforced, in each country in which you seek patent protection for your invention, in accordance with the law of that country.
Therefore, one way of obtaining patents in a number of countries is to file a national patent application with each relevant national patent office. These have the same effect as applications filed, or patents granted, in the member states of that region.
This means that, in certain regions, you can obtain a regional patent from a regional patent office , which is valid in some or all of its member states. If you are seeking patent protection in a number of countries worldwide, a good option is to file an international application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT , administered by WIPO. Any resident or national of a state party to the PCT contracting state can file a single international application which has the effect of a national patent application and certain regional patent applications in some or all PCT contracting states.
In some cases, this can be a more straightforward choice than choosing to try to submit individual applications in each and every country in which you require protection. Find out more about the PCT System.
The first step in securing a patent is the filing of a patent application. Many patent offices provide a specific form to fill in. In some patent offices, you can file a patent application on line. In the patent application, in general, you must describe the title of the invention, as well as provide an indication of its technical field. You must also include the background to and a description of the invention, in clear language and enough detail that a person with an average understanding of the field could use or reproduce the invention.
Such descriptions are usually accompanied by visual materials such as drawings, plans, or diagrams to better describe the invention and an abstract, which contains a brief summary of the invention. In addition, depending on the applicable patent law, you may need to submit various kinds of statements, declarations or supporting documents to a patent office.
In view of the complexity it is recommended that you consult a patent attorney or a patent agent to prepare a patent application. The procedures vary significantly from one country to another, so it is impossible to provide an exhaustive step-by-step overview. However it is recommended that you consult either a practicing lawyer specializing in IP or the relevant IP office. Consult our directory of national and regional IP offices. The grant of a patent can be challenged either via a patent office or in a court of law.
A court may invalidate or revoke a patent upon a successful challenge by a third party. In addition, many patent offices provide administrative procedures that allow third parties to oppose to the grant of a patent including so-called "opposition systems" , for example, on the basis that the claimed invention is not new or does not involve an inventive step. Procedures for challenging patents differ from country to country.
Find out more about opposition systems. In some countries, patent protection may be extended beyond 20 years or a Supplementary Protection Certificate SPC may be issued in very specific cases. The extension aims to compensate for the time expended on the administrative approval procedure before products can be put on the market.
The time taken for this procedure means that the patent owner may sometimes not be able to benefit from his right for a considerable period of time after the grant of the patent.
Possibly, but laws and practices in this regard can differ from one country or region to another. In other countries, such requirements do not exist, meaning that in these countries software is generally patentable subject matter. However this does not mean that all software will be able to be patent protected.
In order to obtain a patent, a software invention must not fall under other non-patentable subject matter for example, abstract ideas or mathematical theories and has to fulfill the other substantive patentability criteria for example, novelty, inventive step [non-obviousness] and industrial applicability [usefulness].
It is therefore recommended that you consult a practicing lawyer specializing in intellectual property or the intellectual property offices of those countries in which you are interested in obtaining protection. Consult our directory of national and regional intellectual property offices to get in contact with a local IP professional, or browse the WIPO Lex database of intellectual property legislation from around the world.
Find out more about using patents to protect software and business methods. Should a patent turn out not to be a viable option for your software-related invention, then using copyright as a means of protection may be an alternative. In general, computer programs are protected under copyright as literary works. The protection starts with the creation or fixation of the work, such as software or a webpage. Moreover, in general, you are not required to register or deposit copies of a work in order to obtain copyright protection.
However, according to a well-established principle, copyright protection extends only to expressions, not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation, or mathematical concepts as such. Thus many companies protect the object code of computer programs by copyright, while the source code is kept as a trade secret. Find out more about copyright. Whether you can obtain patent protection for an app depends on which element of your app you wish to protect.
If you want to protect a technical idea or feature relating to the app, patent protection is a potential option. This bundle of rights allows a copyright owner to be flexible when deciding how to realize commercial gain from the underlying work. The owner may sell or license any of these rights to a third-party.
A trademark is a word, name, phrase, or logo that identifies a product or service and helps distinguish it from that offered by the competition. Trademarks can be established through actual use in the marketplace, though they can also be registered with the U.
Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark law aims to prevent consumer confusion by allowing a trademark owner to sue an infringer.
For example, Ford is a well-known car manufacturer. If a new company started making cars and labeled them as "Fords" but charged significantly less, consumers might be tricked into purchasing the competing company's cars, largely because the consumers will assume that they are the same qualify as "real" Fords.
In this situation, the law would allow Ford to sue this infringing company for damages. A patent is a grant to an inventor that allows the inventor to monopolize the manufacture, use, sale, and importation of an invention.
This right lasts a limited time currently 20 years after the application date and gives the patent owner the right to recover damages in a lawsuit against an infringer. There are multiple types of patents available to inventors depending on the nature of the invention. For more, see Guide to Patents. A patent allows the creator of certain kinds of inventions that contain new ideas to keep others from making commercial use of those ideas without the creator's permission.
Trademarks, on the other hand, are not concerned with how a new technology is used. Rather, they protect names of products and services, logos, and other devices—such as color, sound, and even smell—that are used to identify the source of goods or services and distinguish them from the competition.
For example, let's say Juan invents a new type of hammer that makes it difficult to miss the nail. Not only can Juan prevent others from making, selling, or using the precise type of hammer he invented, but he may also be able to apply his patent monopoly rights to prevent people from making commercial use of any similar type of hammer during the time the patent is in effect typically 20 years from the date the patent application is filed.
Generally, patent and trademark laws do not overlap. When it comes to a product design, however — say, jewelry or a distinctively shaped musical instrument—it may be possible to obtain a patent on a design aspect of the device while invoking trademark law to protect the design as a product identifier.
For instance, an auto manufacturer might receive a design patent for the stylistic fins that are part of a car's rear fenders. Then, if the fins were intended to be—and actually are — used to distinguish the particular model car in the marketplace, trademark law may kick in to protect the appearance of the fins. For more information about trademarks, see Nolo's Trademark Resource Center. For a clear explanation of the differences between patents and trademarks, and of the entire patent process, get Patents for Beginners by David Pressman and Richard Stim Nolo.
Copyright protects original works of expression, such as novels, fine arts, music, audio recordings, photography, software, video, cinema, and choreography by preventing people from copying or commercially exploiting them without the copyright owner's permission.
Copyright laws do not protect names, titles, or short phrases. To obtain a patent, the inventor submits his or her application to the U. There are three categories of patents:. The first step in determining whether to protect a new product or invention with a patent is to understand the costs and benefits of patent protection. The patent application and registration process generally lasts three to five years and often involves a costly legal and consulting fees.
That being so, it is crucial to determine, before you file, whether the benefits of being able to exclude others from manufacturing, distributing or exploiting the subject matter outweighs the high costs of prosecuting and protecting the patent.
You should also consider whether there are adequate alternatives for protecting the invention. Is adequate protection available under state trade secret laws? To what extent does the business plan exploit technology before the patent is issued? When conducting this cost-benefit analysis, you should strongly consider:. A patent application must be filed within one year of the public use or publication of the invention.
This statutory requirement applies significant limitations on the level of marketing research or testing. If you decide to pursue a patent, there are two things to do before obtaining a patent attorney.
Compile and maintain careful records relating to the research and testing of the product. These records must:. Also, conduct a search at the USPTO Public Search Room in Arlington, Virginia usually done by an attorney to determine what patents have already been issued in your field and how these will affect your application. Registration is a complicated process.
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