Definition
Patents (and patent laws) provide the owner the exclusive legal right to produce and sell the invention for a period of seventeen years.
Patents are considered incentives to inventors, and the law recognizes the inherent inconsistency between antitrust laws, which are designed to foster competition, and patent laws, which restrict competition.
An invention is patentable if it is a useful, novel, and nonobvious process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter.[1]
References
- ^ American Marketing Association, AMA Dictionary.