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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The U.S. Supreme Court Vacates Festo Reaffirming the Importance of Equitable Patent Protection
NOVEMBER 20, 2001 - Contrary to rampant speculation in the legal community that the doctrine of equivalents for patent claims was dead or nearly so, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reasserted the legal vitality of equitable patent rights in the ...
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Stanford Biotech Strategies Seminar: Michael Shuster and Lynn Pasahow of Fenwick & West.
Protecting Early Stage Technology Michael Shuster, a partner at Fenwick & West known for innovative patent prosecution and solutions, spoke on protecting early stage technology. He began his discussion by noting several recently issued cases that ...
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Patents, Trademarks & Copyrights
In some cases, the best option may be "none of the above." The formula for Coca Cola. has been kept a "trade secret" for decades. If the formula were copyrighted, it would be publicly available, and others could easily obtain it and copy it. Coca ...
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Design Patents as Alternatives to Utility Patents
Design patents are rarely encountered in the chemical process industry and yet they constitute a significant portion of the patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The proportion is slowly increasing, with approximately one design ...
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Spotting Sweet-Sounding Promises of Fraudulent Invention Promotion Firms
Think you've got a great idea for a new product or service? You're not alone. Every year, tens of thousands of people try to develop their ideas and market them commercially. Some people try to sell their idea or invention to a manufacturer that ...
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Patents, Politics, And Cloning
The United States is on the verge of enactment of a law that would inject "pro-life" politics squarely into the patent arena. Indeed, a bill sponsored by Rep. David Joseph Weldon (R-Fla.) would codify the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's existing ...
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Dreams of the Moon and Gold Do Not a Valid Patent Make
Fall 2003 Most people with a even a passing familiarity with patents realize that for a U.S. patent to be valid, it must claim an invention that is new. What many do not know, however, is that a patent must satisfy other requirements that, while ...
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Holmes v. Vornado: A Restatement of the "Arising Under" Jurisdiction of Federal Courts
On June 3, 2002, the Supreme Court issued one of its most important decisions in decades construing the "arising under" jurisdiction of United States District Courts. In Holmes Group, Inc. v. Vornado Air Circulation Systems, Inc.,2 seven Justices ...
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The Next Patent Frontier: Financial Product Patents
Like their software predecessors in the 1980s and their fallen Internet brethren of the 1990s, managers of financial products and services are entering a brave new world where management of intellectual property assets has become vital to protecting ...
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Provisional Patent Applications
Since June of 1995, it has been possible to file a new kind of patent application in the Patent and Trademark Office. This application is called a "provisional" patent application. A provisional application stands in contrast with a "regular" patent ...