Both individuals and businesses have creations and innovations they want to protect to distinguish their products as different from other individuals and competitors. Often, when someone creates something new, they want to protect it. One of the best ways to protect your intellectual property is through legal protection. One method of intellectual property protection people use is a patent.
Patents, due to their stringent requirements, rarely extend to works of art like music or movies. Patents usually pertain to inventions and new creations. Patent qualifications are precise but easy to understand. Knowing what does and doesn’t count for getting a patent is useful when trying to determine whether your invention could become legally protected through a patent.
What Is a Patent?
At its most basic, a patent is a form of intellectual property protection. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution established the power of Congress to offer patents, and federal law essentially gives the inventor of a product a government-gifted monopoly on that product. This offers serious legal protection over an invention. The patent (and its protection) lasts about 20 years. It is granted in exchange for public knowledge about how the invention was made. That way, other people can attempt to create the product. The purpose of patents is to encourage innovation and creativity as well as the production of useful products for the private and public sectors.
Legal Right Over Patents
Patents offer a lot of legal rights to patent-holders. Though they only last 20 years, the legal protections provided during that time are immense. The owner of the patent, the inventor, gets exclusive rights to make, use, and sell the invention. No one else is allowed to do these things with the invention.
Patent infringement is the unauthorized use, sale, or manufacture of your invention by someone else. This means someone is violating your rights, and a claim should be filed in federal court to protect these rights.
What Can Be Patented in Orange County?
There are three distinct types of patents in California: utility, design, and plant patents.
- Utility PatentsA utility patent is the most common patent and is given when a new and helpful process, article of manufacturing, machine, or composition of matter is discovered. It also applies to new improvements in those same areas.Discovering a method or process is creating a new way to manufacture a tangible object. Therefore, any sequence of steps that is new, useful, and not obvious is considered a patentable process or method. This is often used to protect business methods and computer programs.
Articles of manufacturing are products formed in a specific shape, design, or style during manufacturing. Useful items such as shovels and gloves are known examples of articles of manufacturing that have been protected by patents.
The requirements for what’s considered a machine usually include a lot of moving parts, interoperating pieces, or circuitry. Machines have more moving parts than articles of manufacture. Examples include sewing machines and TV sets.
A new composition of chemicals or matter can also be protected, which usually protects pharmaceuticals, chemical intermediates, and transitory products.
- Design PatentsThis patent is given to anyone who comes up with a new ornamental design for an article of manufacturing. While the utility patent protects the structure and function of an article of manufacture, design patents protect only the design. Examples include designs of hammers, crowbars, and chairs, where the function can’t be patented, but the design can be.
- Plant PatentsThis patent pertains exclusively to plants and is incredibly rare. Anyone who creates or discovers a new plant variety, and asexually reproduces it, can get a plant patent on the entire plant. This includes hybrids, mutants, newly discovered seedlings, and cultivated plants, although it doesn’t apply to tuber-propagated plants or plants found uncultivated. Many inventors rely on this patent to protect their new plant varieties, and famous plant patents include apple trees and rose bushes.
Some other broad examples of patents include chemical formulas, medical devices, computer software, jewelry designs, and more.
What Can’t Be Patented in Orange County?
Most inventions can be patented, as well as the making process of the invention. However, specific things are not patentable, including:
- Laws of nature
- Physical phenomena
- Abstract ideas
- Algorithms
- Scientific theories
- Scientific principles
- Human beings
Additionally, an invention that is obvious or not useful cannot receive a patent. An invention must meet numerous requirements before it can be patented.
Requirements for a Patent
An invention must meet certain qualifications to receive a patent, even if it fits into the above-listed categories. An invention must be:
- NovelThis means it is different from other similar inventions, and cannot have been sold, offered to be sold, or used in public. Therefore, it must be unavailable to the public for at least a year after filing the patent application.
- Non-obviousThe invention must be innovative and cannot be obvious to someone with relevant experience in that field of study or relevant skills. This is meant to avoid giving patents to conceptual or process ideas that are on their way to becoming new inventions.
- UsefulThis means that the invention is helpful, beneficial, and can be used. This prevents hypothetical concepts from being patented.
Patent Litigation
There are often cases of patent infringements. If you have a patent and are trying to prevent someone from infringing on your rights or are fighting to get a patent and are having legal issues, you should hire experienced legal counsel. The Myers Law Group has decades of experience in intellectual property and patent law. It’s very important to protect your intellectual property, especially if your invention is integral to your business process, and infringement could cost you profits and reputation.
As an individual with a patent, you want someone in your corner with the legal expertise to protect you at every stage of the patent process. To protect your intellectual property and your rights as a patent holder, you want a qualified professional who knows the in-depth processes of intellectual property laws.