The following are commonly asked questions. If you have additional questions, please contact us. For greater detail and information we recommend visiting the web sites listed in the Web Sites of interest below.
Table of Contents
What Is a Patent?
What Is a Trademark or Servicemark?
What Is a Copyright?
Questions and Answers
Web Sites of interest:
What Is a Patent?
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. 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. US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions.
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.
(Excerpted from General Information Concerning Patents print brochure.)
Some people confuse patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Although there may be some similarities among these kinds of intellectual property protection, they are different and serve different purposes.
The above information was selected from the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site. See Patents: For greater detail and information we recommend visiting the web sites listed in the Web Sites of interest below.
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What Is a Trademark or Servicemark?
A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. The terms "trademark" and "mark" are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks.
Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark. Trademarks which are used in interstate or foreign commerce may be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office. The registration procedure for trademarks and general information concerning trademarks is described in a separate pamphlet entitled "Basic Facts about Trademarks."
(Excerpted from General Information Concerning Patents print brochure.)
Some people confuse patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Although there may be some similarities among these kinds of intellectual property protection, they are different and serve different purposes.
The above information was selected from the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site. See Trademarks: For greater detail and information we recommend visiting the web sites listed in the Web Sites of interest below.
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What Is a Copyright?
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 Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.
(Excerpted from General Information Concerning Patents print brochure.)
Some people confuse patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Although there may be some similarities among these kinds of intellectual property protection, they are different and serve different purposes.
The above information was selected from the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site. See Copyrights: For greater detail and information we recommend visiting the web sites listed in the Web Sites of interest below.
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Questions and Answers
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Web Sites of interest:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/whatis.htm .......................
........................................ What are Patents, Trademarks, Servicemarks, and Copyrights.
http://www.uspto.gov/ ............................... United States Patent and Trademark Office
http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm .................................... Patent information
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/patents.htm#Patent ............. Patents
http://www.google.com/patents .............................................. Google Patent Search
http://patents.cos.com/ .............................................................. COS Patent Search
http://www.trademark.com/newsite2/index.html .......................... Trademark.com
http://www.uspto.gov/web/trademarks/workflow/start.htm ...............................
......................................................................................... Trademarks - Where to start
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/doc/basic/ .. Basic Facts About Trademarks
http://www.uspto.gov/teas/index.html Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS)
http://tess2.uspto.gov/tmdb/tmep/ ..................... Trademark Manual of Examination
http://www.copyright.gov/ ................................................................. Copyright.gov
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/pssd/ .................. Public Search Facility
http://www.uspto.gov/smallbusiness/ ......................... StopFakes.gov/smallbusiness
http://www.commerce.gov/ .............................................. Department of Commerce
http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/ .................................................. Copyright information
http://tarr.uspto.gov/ ............. Trademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval (TARR)
Disclaimer: TechNeer provides these links solely for the convenience of the TechNeer visitor. TechNeer does not endorse these companies' products nor the accuracy of any information presented on their web sites.
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