|
|
|
Some people confuse patents,
copyrights, and trademarks. Although there may be some similarities
among these kinds of intellectual property protection, they are different
and serve different purposes.
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the
inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which
the application for the patent was filed in the United States or,
in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was
filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. U.S. patent grants
are effective only within the United States, U.S. territories, and
U.S. possessions. Under certain circumstances, patent term extensions
or adjustments may be available.
The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the
statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from
making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the
United States or “importing” the invention into the United States.
What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell
or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering
for sale, selling or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued,
the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO.
There are three
types of patents:
Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof; Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plants.
A trademark is a word, name, symbol, or device that is used in trade
with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish
them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark
except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service
rather than a product. The terms “trademark” and “mark” are commonly
used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks.
Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly
similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods
or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different
mark. Trademarks which are used in interstate or foreign commerce
may be registered with the USPTO. The registration procedure for trademarks
and general information concerning trademarks is described in a separate
pamphlet entitled “Basic Facts about Trademarks.”
Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original
works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic,
and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished.
The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the
exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative
works, to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work,
to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted
work publicly.
The copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject
matter of the writing. For example, a description of a machine could
be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the
description; it would not prevent others from writing a description
of their own or from making and using the machine. Copyrights are
registered by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.
|
