Legal News
How Do I Obtain a Patent?
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Patents on Tuesday, February 3, 2015. While "intellectual property" may sound like a complicated area of the law, its basic principles are simple: at its core, intellectual property law is about who owns property that is the result of mental efforts. The owner of this type of property has rights based on federal laws concerning patents, trademarks, and copyrights, as well as state laws concerning trade secrets. A patent provides an owner with protection over a tangible thing. The federal government issues patents, which are documents that give the owner the right to exclude other people from making, using, or selling the invention. A patent owner has this exclusive right for twenty years. While some may argue that twenty years is not nearly long enough to maximize a patent's value, this time period is intended to recognize and reward particular inventors' efforts as well [...]