The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation of a wide variety of intellectual goods for consumers. To achieve this goal, the law typically gives people and businesses property rights to the information and intellectual goods they create, usually for a limited period of time. This monopoly gives economic incentive for their creation.
All copyright are NOT the same!
Most modern copyright systems do not treat copyrighted or patented materials in the same way as real property : the generic term “intellectual property” has gained prominence during the XXth century. With EU law usage, it has came to fashion to add the adjective “industrial”, to distinguish it from the “civil” version.
“Industrial” intellectual property rights include patents, copyright, industrial design rights, trademarks, plant variety rights, trade dress, geographical indications, and in some jurisdictions trade and industrial secrets.
Locally, more specialized or derived varieties of sui generis exclusive rights, such as circuit design rights (called mask work rights in the US) and supplementary protection certificates for pharmaceutical products (after expiry of a patent protecting them) and database rights (in European law).
Protect your product!
Inventors must check their product and ask themself : do they really know all the applicable law? Do they really know better? That is exactly what they need to know before they make an enormously costly mistake.
The first modern patent was given in Florence, in 1421, and the first patenting system was set in Venice in 1474. Interesting enough, not much have changed as to patent application itself. The latter provided that patents might be granted for “any new and ingenious device, not previously made”, provided it was useful. By and large, these principles still remain the basic principles of patent law.
However, that is the only common point.
Techniques, competition, and law application have changed since the XVth century, and change even inside the same country. One reason you want to hire a patent attorney to help you, if you can afford one, is because it is extremely easy for inventors to make mistakes that will render their hopes and dreams of a patent null and void.
If you think that you can develop your invention and THEN ask for a patent you are dead wrong. Frequently the story is that the inventor created something several years ago (perhaps more) and they have been using it and people love it. They finally now have the money to pursue a patent and want to get started. Those familiar with patent law know they cannot get started, because rights have irreparably been lost.
Ask an expert before it is too late for your patent!!
Special recourses exist. You can try improve your magnum opus enough so that it is patentably unique compared to your original invention, which is not something that is typically easy to do. Those recourses seldom succeed. . This now is an even more acute problem given that most country worldwide have converted to a first to file system.
Eternos Corporation is here to help you patent your invention and protect your business
