Many people are under the impression that patents, trademarks and copyrights are the same thing. In actual fact, patents, trademarks and copyrights are areas that fall under intellectual property law because they are all considered intellectual property.

For those of you who are inventors or have a habit of making profitable discoveries, it would be a good idea to have your ideas or inventions protected. For this, would would need the assistance of a Patent Attorney.

But what actually is a patent. Basically a patent is the grant of right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing an invention or discovery, including new and improved products and processes. A patent attorney can help you register your patents in foreign countries. copyright lawyers These patents can be c=valid for 20 years and are renewable. Once the patent expires, the exclusive rights to make, use, sell or import the invention or discovery is lost.

Patents can range from the famously useful to the famously ridiculous. Some patents changed the world forever. These would include Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone and James Otto’s four stroke gas engine. Then there are those whose existence defies explanation. These would include the Cordless Jump Rope and the Slot Machine Shaped Toaster.

But whatever you invent, ridiculous or not, you need a patent attorney to help you get your invention registered and protected. Very few people know that Abraham Lincoln President that received a patent for his Buoying Vessels over Shoals. But he never got paid for it. It would be a safe bet to say that if he had a patent attorney to advise him, he probably would have.