It’s easy, unfortunately, to patent intellectual property you
did not invent. For instance, a few years ago, a gentleman in Australia patented
the wheel. According to Australian patent law, he was within his rights. Although
later the law was changed to prevent anyone from doing this again, he still
went down in history as the man who patented the wheel.
You should always patent your inventions as soon as you can to protect your
intellectual property rights. You should hire a good patent lawyer to take care
of the patent registration for you; not only will he do a patent search to make
sure your invention doesn’t exist and thus you aren’t infringing
on someone else’s intellectual property rights, but he will also protect
all the intellectual property rights he can, both in the US and internationally.
This is very important these days; Chinese and other Asian firms in countries
with loose patent laws are infringing on everyone’s intellectual property
rights, from reprinting without permission the Harry Potter books to selling
bootleg copies of MS Windows.
In addition, it’s not always that easy to see when you’ve infringed
on someone else’s intellectual property. For several years, kids were
filesharing songs on Napster, resulting in a number of lawsuits and some kids
getting in really serious trouble. In the early days of the Internet, some people
were registering domain names like mickey.com or goofy.com, ignoring any intellectual
rights Disney might have in its own characters. If you have patented or copyrighted
your intellectual property, it’s much more difficult for a greedy person
to steal your intellectual property from you.
Your patent is your seal of ownership on your intellectual property. Without
a patent, anyone can legally steal your invention. A patent lawyer is there
to protect your intellectual property rights. Use him.
Intellectual Property Help
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