April 2009
Inventors are so creative, and so important to our economy and way of life, that our government offers them four main ways to protect their new ideas. Attorneys Dr. C. John Brannon and Mr. Tony A. Gibbens of Brannon & Associates PC explained these forms of protection and offered practical advice on how to use them. 1. Three kinds of patents protect technology (an idea of a physical means to a useful end). A utility patent (for a machine, manufactured article, method, composition of matter, or an improvement of one of these) or a plant patent (for an asexually reproduced plant) protects technology itself. A design patent protects the nonfunctional ornamental appearance of a useful thing. A patent owner has the right to exclude others from making, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing the invention in the United States. But a patent does not give the owner the right to perform those acts (some patents interfere with other patents). Our government grants a patent to an a...