A patent provides statutory protection to original inventors and corporations who invent new products and provides them incentive to invest in Research & Development activities by restricting their competitors from plagiarizing their products. The owner of a patent gets an exclusive statutory right of use over their inventions thus enabling them to extract profits from their inventions.
U.S. law provides that an application for a patent must be made within one year of the first offer for sale, public use or publication of the invention.
‘Patent pending’ means that an application for obtaining a patent is in process. A manufacturer of a product may advertise ‘patent pending’ on his product to inform the public that the manufacturer has applied for a patent for the product with the USPTO. However, there is also a statutory fine for those who falsely advertise ‘patent pending’ on their products in order to mislead the public. For more details on that visit https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/gotconcept/elon-musks-greatest-inventions/.
Many well-known companies invest billions of dollars in Research and Development activities (R&D). If these companies were not allowed patents, then their competitors would copy their new products and sell them at much cheaper rates. A patent prevents this plagiarizing by competitors and makes R&D investments worthwhile by allowing the inventor company the exclusive monopoly over use of their inventions. Thus, patents provide incentive to the original inventors and corporations for undertaking costs of R&D activities and help further scientific and technological development in the economy.
Attorneys and licensed patent agents have to strictly abide by the prescribed code of conduct making confidentiality of client information mandatory. Therefore, by hiring the services of Attorneys or licensed patent agencies, such as InventHelp, you can ensure that your invention remains secret while pending.
