Patents: Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property
While we are focused on patents, it's important to understand the wider context and different types of, intellectual property, and they protect different 'things' in different ways.
Types of Intellectual Property
Basics
- Patents grant the holder exclusive rights to manufacture, use, sell, or build upon the technology, essentially a state-granted limited monopoly.
- There is no global patent system, however there are treaties that ensure mutual respect for patents. Unlike copyright, patents must be registered.
- In the U.S. patents expire after 20 years (typically). It's then in public domain and anyone can use it.
The 3 types of U.S. Patents - as defined by the U.S.P.T.O.
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Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;
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Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and
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Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.
To receive a U.S. patent, the follow must be satisfied
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The invention needs to be "useful" - has a useful purpose
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Needs to be novel or original - no prior art that someone has already done
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Needs to be non-obvious - to a person with ordinary skills in the area of the technology related to the invention
Basics
- A trademark is an image, logo, name or phrase used to indicate the source of goods, and distinguish them from others. They serve a social function for consumers to know what or from who a product is from.
- Service marks are the same as a trademark, but are for services not products or goods.
- They don't expire like patents and copyrights, but the owner must keep it active in commerce, or risk it going generic (eg. Xerox machines coming to mean any photocopy machine not just those made by Xerox, or it being used as a verb).
- In the U.S. it's ok to have two trademarks the same if they are for different markets. For example, Delta Airlines and Delta Faucet. It's presumed no reasonable consumer will confuse these Deltas as they for very different markets.
Basics
- Generally copyright protects books, maps, literary works or fiction and non-fiction, music, plays, scripts, pictures, motion pictures, sound recordings, and other digital or analog methods of production - published or unpublished. In the U.S. people don't need to register their things for copyright, it's automatic.
To be eligible for copyright...
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A work needs to be original - meaning it has markers of creative decision making by the creator
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A work needs to be fixed in a tangible medium - meaning written, drawn, typed, recorded or otherwise set or captured
A copyright holder can be...
- An individual,
- a group of people,
- or a corporation
Copyright grants exclusive rights to...
- Reproduce the work, produce derivative works (other products inspired by the work), decide how and where to sell, lease or lend the work, publicly perform the work
Copyright limits
- Expiration, fair use, first sale, idea/expression dichotomy
