When investing in a small company, part of the critical information that investors need to know are (1) whether the product or products produced by the company infringe or will infringe patents owned by others, and (2) the strength of the company’s own patent portfolio. While these questions seem related because they both deal with […]
Generally, there are two ways of transferring intellectual property to others: (1) an assignment, and (2) a license agreement. Assignments: An assignment is a legal document which transfers all the rights in an intellectual property to another. Patent and trademark assignments, for instance, are typically registered with the U.S. patent office and are a matter […]
Since June 8, 1995, the United States Patent Office has offered inventors the option of filing a provisional application (or a “provisional”). According to the patent office, a provisional patent application was designed to provide a lower cost for a first patent filing in the United States and to give U.S. applicants parity with foreign […]
A design patent protects an ornamental design for an article of manufacture. In other words, the design patent protects only the appearance of an article, but not its structural or functional features. The procedures relating to granting of design patents are the similar to those of utility patents. A design patent has a term of […]
The foundation of United States patent law is based on a quid pro quo between the applicant and the government. The government grants a monopoly for the invention in exchange for a technology disclosure which should increase the public’s collective knowledge. Once the patent expires, anyone is then free to practice the invention. Furthermore, because […]
A patent is a government grant or intellectual property right that allows its owner to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the claimed invention. Patents are probably the strongest of all intellectual property protection because: A patent protects the underlying concept of an invention. In a computer program, for instance, this usually […]