Patents, Copyrights, and Other Types of Intellectual Property

What is a Patent?

A patent is a property right granted by a sovereign nation that gives the holder the exclusive right to exclude others, without permission, from the manufacture, use and sale of an invention for a period of years.

In the United States, the Constitution gives Congress the power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8). Pursuant to this authority, Congress enacted the first patent law in 1790. It is now codified in Title 35 of the United States Code.

A patent is an agreement between the inventor and the public. Patents aid progress by allowing full public disclosure of an invention while granting the inventor the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the defined invention without permission.

As property, it may be sold or assigned, pledged, mortgaged, licensed, willed or donated. Commercialization may be accomplished by the owner exercising the rights referred to above or by permitting others to exercise rights under the terms of one or more licenses. The grant of a U.S. Patent is effective for a period of 17 years from issuance but not more than 20 years from the date of application.

A Patent consists of:

1. The field of invention
2. Background
3. Drawings
4. Brief Description of the drawings
5. Disclosure of invention
6. Summary of invention
7. Industrial Applicability
8. Claims

In order for an invention to be eligible for a patent it has to pass the following tests:

1. It must be novel
2. It must be useful
3. It must be non-obvious to one skilled in the art

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issues patents. For more information see http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm

For information regarding inventorship please see http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu/disclosures.html#inv_coinvquest

If you need to complete an Invention Disclosure Form please visit http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu/disclosures.html

WHAT IS A COPYRIGHT?

A Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work, to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly.

The copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, a description of a machine could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making and using the machine.

Copyrights are registered by the U.S. Copyright Office [http://www.copyright.gov/] For more information please see http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html

A Word about Works for Hire

A copyright is owned by the author(s) who created the work. Generally speaking, a work for hire is a work that was created by an employee within the scope of the employment. In other words the employee was hired to create the work. Works for Hire are owned not by the author, but by the third party/company/employer who commissioned the work. A creative work that a party commissions an author to produce is work for hire if the parties sign a contract stating that the work is for hire, and if it is ordered for the use as:

• a contribution to a collective work
• a work done as part of a motion picture or another audiovisual work
• a translation of another work
• a compilation of another work
• an instructional text
• a test
• as answer material for a test
• or as an atlas

Faculty are encouraged to be wary of such agreements from consulting contracts

Please complete a Work Disclosure Form http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu/disclosures.html if this is the nature of your technology.

WHAT OTHER TYPES OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY EXISTS?

While patents and copyrights are the most dominant intellectual property, there are also service marks and trademarks.

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.

A service mark is the same as a trademark, except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. Throughout this booklet, the terms "trademark" and "mark" refer to both trademarks and service marks

Trademarks and service marks are registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. For more information please visit http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/doc/basic/index.html