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. This is FindLaw's collection of Patent articles, part of the Intellectual Property section of the Corporate Counsel Center. Law articles in this archive are predominantly written by lawyers for a professional audience seeking business solutions to legal issues. Start your free research with FindLaw.
Patent
Patent Articles
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Patent Law You Can Use, Part 1
Abstract - The four types of intellectual property: copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, protect different types of creations of the human mind. This article provides an overview of each type of intellectual property and discusses ...
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Cloning Patents: A Patent Office and Legislative Update
Given the ongoing debate in the political arena about stem cells research and human cloning, this article investigates the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO) past and present practice with respect to patenting such technologies. Interestingly ...
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Car Wars
An interesting package design case has been decided by the courts. It involves the hotly contested magazine market. The segment is used cars, and the person being targeted is attracted to what are called "affordable" classic cars rather than "top of ...
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Can a Patent be Pending for Too Long?
As the economic power of patents continues to grow, time-honored beliefs in the virtues of the patent system and the rights of patent holders have come under increasing scrutiny, and accusations of abuses of the patent system are increasingly ...
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Business Method Patents and Pre-Grant Publication: The Increasing Complexity of Patent Strategies
As the Year 2000 comes to a close, developments in the esoteric world of patents continue to grow in importance, even to businesses previously not concerned with patents. Driven by investor demand for proprietary technologies and patent portfolios ...
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Arent Fox Alert: FDA Files Notice of Appeal in Pharmanex, Inc. v. Shalala
On February 16, 1999, a federal district court set aside and held unlawful the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's ("FDA") determination that Cholestin. is a drug rather than a dietary supplement under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, as ...
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Study Finds Patent Claimants Fare Better with Juries
Patent claimants, or patentees, fare better than alleged patent infringers with juries than they do with bench trials, according to a recently published study by Stanford law professor, Mark A. Lemley. In his study, Professor Lemley, along with ...
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Start-Ups Are Becoming More Frequent Targets of Patent Trolls
The recent Apple vs. Samsung patent case highlighted a topic many technology companies deal with now more often than in the past: patent infringement litigation. While it's no surprise that large and small companies were often targeted in patent ...
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List of Top Patenting Organizations: 1997
PRELIMINARY LIST OF TOP PATENTING ORGANIZATIONS * Calendar Year 1997 This report presents a preliminary list of organizations receiving the most patents for invention (i.e., utility patents) during the 1997 CALENDAR year. For the fifth straight ...
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List of Top Patenting Organizations: 1998
LIST OF TOP PATENTING ORGANIZATIONS * Calendar Year 1998 This report presents a preliminary list* of organizations receiving the most patents for invention (i.e., utility patents) during the 1998 CALENDAR year. For the sixth consecutive year ...