An Inventor's Guidelines for Preserving Patent Rights

摘要

Intellectual property, or IP, generally refers to patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. IP, unlike real property - land with a house, for example - is intangible in form. One cannot hold it, and it cannot be seen it until it is manifested in some specific article. For example, a book manifests a copyright, a logo manifests a trademark, and an article of manufacture manifests a patented invention. Intellectual property laws are the means through which the United States allows creators and inventors to protect their ideas, innovations, and hard work; i.e., patents can be said to protect ideas, trademarks can be said to protect reputations and hard work, and copyrights can be said to protect artistic expression. Most engineers and software developers are at least familiar with the term "intellectual property," but might not fully appreciate the advantages that inhere in its protection. Intellectual property laws give the owner of the IP, whether patent, copyright, or trademark, a legal monopoly to prevent others from exploiting the protected creation. However, without intending to be careless, one might inadvertently perform an action that might result in an accidental loss of rights to some or all of one's intellectual property. It is also possible that unless certain steps are taken to protect intellectual property before a given deadline, an accidental loss of rights to some or all of one's intellectual property may occur.