| Patent Law |
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| It has been held by the United States Supreme Court that laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas may not be the subject of a patent. The reasoning behind this rule is that laws of nature and abstract ideas are not created; rather, they exist independent of any person and are merely described by the person that discovers them. Included in the types of abstract ideas for which patents may not be obtained are mathematical formulae and algorithms, which are sets of steps or procedures designed to solve a problem.
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| Regional Patent Offices |
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| The issuance of a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office provides patent protection to an inventor only within the United States. Because each country has its own patent laws, other countries do not provide patent protection to a U.S. patentee, nor does the United States provide patent protection to a foreign patentee. Originally, if a U.S. inventor wished to obtain patent protection in other countries, he or she was required to obtain patents from each country in which patent protection was desired, which obviously entailed substantial time and expense. Eventually, however, international cooperation helped streamline the process of obtaining patents in other countries in many cases.More... |
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| Patentable Subject Matter |
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| Patent law specifies the general field of subject matter that may be patented as well as the conditions under which a patent may be obtained. In the language of the applicable statute, any person who "invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent." Under law, patents are granted on new inventions of-or useful improvements on-things in the following categories:More... |
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| Trademark Fair Use |
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| A party is entitled to use a trademark in such as way as to describe the qualities that a mark represents as long as the manner of use of the mark is not as a trademark but only used in a descriptive sense. Fair use of a trademark occurs when a defendant uses a descriptive trademark of another party to describe the defendant's own product. This is the fair use defense set forth in the Lanham Act that provides: More... |
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| Generic Names as Trademark Subject Matter |
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| A generic name is the common descriptive name of the product a trademark identifies. Generic names may not be protected under trademark laws. The intended trademark cannot be registered and the owner has no right to stop others from using a similar mark. Unlike descriptive marks, generic devices will not become a trademark even if they are advertised so heavily that secondary meaning can be proven in the mind of consumers. The rationale for creating the category of generic marks is that no manufacturer or service provider should be given exclusive right to use words that generically identify a product. Therefore, if a company attempts to use the name of the goods themselves, such as "Lemonade" for a lemonade drink or "Bicycle" for a bicycle, that name will not be protected because it is generic. More... |
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