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Understanding Patent and Copyright Applications
Source: U. S. Patent and Trademark Office
There are three types of patents: utility patents, design patents and plant patents. Utility patents cover the creation of a new or improved product, process or machine. Design patents cover unique visual characteristics of a product( think the curved Coca-Cola ® bottle or the Mercedes-Benz ® hood ornament). Plant patents are granted to people who invent, discover or asexually reproduce a new variety of plant.
Utility patents may be provisional or non-provisional. Provisional patents serve as placeholders to establish a date the inventor stakes a claim to a product, invention or process. From the date the provisional patent application is filed, the inventor has a year to further establish the claim and add details in support. It gives time to further develop the invention before filing the official patent application, called a non-provisional patent application or utility patent application.
If a non-provisional patent application is successful, a utility patent is issued, granting exclusive rights to produce, use, sell and import the invention for a specific period of time, usually 20 years. Inventors may also apply for international patent protection through the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
Provisional patent applications are not reviewed the way non-provisional applications are, so the clock is ticking to get the official application in order and filed within the year or the provisional patent expires.
The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in other countries, known as international or foreign patents. As of October 2024, there were 158 signees to the treaty; notably, Argentina, Pakistan, Taiwan and Venezuela are not among them.
Copyright is a property right given to authors that allows them to control, protect and use their artistic works that are original, creative and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, such as books and videos.
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