<center>Patents protect inventions. Patentable inventions include new and useful processes, machines, manufactures or compositions of matter, as well as any new and useful improvement there of Patent protection is not available under either state or common law. Under federal patent law, an inventor can obtain the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a particular invention. While patents formerly remained in force for 17 years from the date of their issuance, patents now expire 20 years from the date of their filing. Bear in mind that a patent does not allow its holder to do anything, only to prevent others from utilizing the invention.
Patent protection is not available for all types of inventions. Patent law does not protect any ideas, any obvious combinations of pre-existing devices, illegal or immoral matter, pure research, or anything that is simply a novelty or curiosity. Items such as perpetual motion machines are summarily rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Patents typically consist of a brief description of the background and pre-existing technology, a detailed description of the preferred embodiment of the invention, drawings, and/or flowcharts associated with the invention, an abstract of the invention, and one or more claims. The claims are each a one-sentence description of the invention which, preferably are broad enough to differentiate the invention over any pre-existing devices or obvious combination there of. The claims, however, must be narrow enough so as not to include any extraneous matter, which would serve as a limitation to the enforceable scope of the patent.
If an infringer copies the functional elements of a patented device, they may be liable for infringement. To determine infringement, a court looks at a particular claim within the patent to determine if each element there of, or its equivalent, can be found in the accused device. If the accused device does indeed include every element of the claim, the device infringes and the claims included within the patent, if the accused device infringes a single claim, the infringer is a liable for the same amount of damages as if the infringer had infringed every claim of the patent. While it is infringement to make, use or sell a device which infringes a valid, non-expired patent, it is not an infringement to patent an otherwise infringing device.
As an example, if an inventor were to invent a chair and receive a patent thereon, a subsequent inventor could file and obtain a patent on a chair with arms. Neither the first patent owner nor the second patent owner could make the chair with arms without infringing the other’s patent. However, the parties could negotiate a cross-license where both parties pay each other a royalty in exchange for being allowed to manufacture the improved device. If an entity is found to have infringed a patent, the available remedies include an injunction, as well as the patent holder’s damages. In the case of willful infringement, treble damages and attorney fees may also be available.</center>
