PROTECTING YOUR BUSINESS' INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

AuthorWilson, Jeff
Position2018 LAW JOURNAL

What are patents, trademarks, and copyrights? How does obtaining these intellectual property rights, or "IP" rights, help create value for your business?

Unfortunately, there are no short answers to these questions. With that being said, in this article we attempt to make the subject of IP more accessible and provide a pathway to understanding how IP can be used to protect the products that your business has spent blood, sweat, and capital on, and also how it can create growth and value for your business.

A patent issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office is an IP right that grants the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling, or importing the invention covered in the patent. In order to obtain a patent, the invention must be a machine, apparatus, process, plant, or composition of matter. Although abstract ideas or mathematical formulas are not patentable, in some instances software is patentable.

There are several different types of patents, including utility patents, design patents, and plant patents. Utility patents, which include provisional patent applications and non-provisional patents, are by far the most common, followed by design patents. Utility patents protect the functionality of an invention. While a provisional patent application cannot itself become a granted patent, it can be used to establish a filing date and later be used as a basis for a non-provisional patent application claiming priority to the provisional patent application. A nonprovisional patent typically has a term of 20 years from the earliest effective filing date, with some adjustment possible for time delays. Periodic maintenance fees are required to keep a non-provisional patent in force. Design patents protect the ornamental design of an invention and have a term of 15 years from the date the patent is issued. No maintenance fees are required to keep a design patent in force.

The most obvious reason for filing a patent application is to protect the years of work and capital invested in your product. Since you or your business invested the time and money in the product, providing an ability to stop others from copying your product is one of the main reasons why patents exist. Obtaining a patent on your product, however, can also help your business in other ways. Patent licensing allows you to give certain rights to others to your invention, for a fee, and can result in extra income without having to invest any...

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