Short stories of human inventions
Posts tagged Utility Patents
3 Types of Invention Patents
A patent is a patent is a patent. False! There are many different subcategories of patents. This article demonstrates the 3 main types of invention patents:1. Utility Patents (cover new and useful inventions such as mechanical devices, electronics, medical devices, biotechnology, gadgets, and processes for making things).2. Design Patents (cover new and ornamental designs of products (articles of manufacture) such as containers, furniture, toys, or housewares).3. Plant Patents (cover new and distinct plant varieties such as flowering plants, vegetables and fruit trees).In the United States, if the inventor makes an offer to sell, makes a sale, or publicly discloses the invention, the inventor has one year from the earliest of those events to file a US patent application. Otherwise, an inventor will lose their US patent rights.If an inventor makes an offer to sell, makes a sale, or publicly discloses the invention before filing a patent application he/she will likely lose their rights to file in foreign countries. WARNING: Don’t assume you know exactly what category your patent falls under. Sometimes there can be a very fine line between certain types of patents.TIP: Try not to spend much… More >>
Protect Your Invention – 2 Inexpensive Legal Ways
August 24, 2009
by merlin
in General Topics
There are two legal ways to protect your invention that you will want to consider before spending thousands of dollars on a patent. But before we get into that, you need to understand how intellectual property rights work.Intellectual Property includes patents, trademarks, servicemarks, and copyrights.A) WHAT IS A PATENT?A patent allows you to exclude others from making or selling the invention but does not grant you the right to make or sell an invention. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years, and U.S. patent grants are only effective within the United States.There are three types of patents:1) Utility patents cover processes, machines, articles of manufacture, composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement of something.2) Design patents cover the design or look of an invention.3) Plant patents cover asexually reproduced distinct and new varieties of plants.A utility patent is the strongest patent an inventor can obtain to protect an idea and how it works.A design patent, although significantly less expensive, will only protect the way your invention looks (shape, color, size, etc), not the way and reason it works.B) WHAT IS A TRADEMARK OR… More >>