Today’s Tip
Best Practice: Protect your brand with a patent. There are three types of patents: utility, design and plant.
Today’s Article: Protect Your Brand with a Patent
Your brand is one of your most valuable business assets. It distinguishes your company or product in the marketplace. Once the brand is established it is important to protect it. The best legal way to protect your brand if it involves a useful process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter or plant materials is a patent.
What is a Patent?
“A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. U.S. patent grants are effective only within the United States, U.S. territories, and U.S. possessions. Under certain circumstances, patent term extensions or adjustments may be available.”
“The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, ‘the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling’ the invention in the United States or ‘importing’ the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued, the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO.”
There are three types of patents:
1) Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter
2) Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture
3) Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.
Action Step: 1. Make a decision – do I need a Patent? 2. Will I file it myself or use a professional patent service?
File Patent Myself
Use a Patent Service
Additional Resources
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