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IP: Your house, your car, and your civil rights
are controlled and protected by laws.
YOUR IDEAS ARE NOT; not, that is, until you communicate
them. Ideas are intellectual
property, and only when they are communicated, translated into writings, or
realized in tangible objects do legal rights and obligations arise.
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NO ONE is obligated to communicate ideas.
But keeping them to yourself does not serve mankind. Patenting your idea is a way to protect
your intellectual property and contribute to the common good. The authors of the U.S. Constitution
understood this and empowered Congress
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“to promote the Progress of Science and the
Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries.”
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Patent:
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A
patent for an invention is a grant of a property right by the
Government to the inventor acting through the Patent and Trademark
Office. The term of a patent is 20
years from the date an inventor first applies for the patent subject to the
payment of appropriate maintenance fees.
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A patent is a “contract which gives the
inventor “the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling” the
invention during a limited time period.
What is granted is not the right to make, use, or sell, but
the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the
invention. The inventor must provide
a full public disclosure of information about the invention.
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