subject: The Differences Between American & Global Inventor Protection [print this page] A patent is a document that temporarily protects the rights of an individual or group of individual and is supported globally by various sovereign authorities. These are usually known as intellectual property rights. Before selling the invention or ideas, it is wise to procure a patent; a patent attorney or patent agent can help a creative professional to file and prosecute a patent on a new invention. If an inventor does not pursue the legal shield of a patent, a duplicitous competitor might try to take patent title of the invention without having actually created it first. Intellectual property law in the United States of America contrasts starkly with the laws in other countries.
Globally, a majority of countries have laws that operate almost like pirates in the Caribbean. If you are lucky enough to shoot first then you will gain the treasure; so in those countries securing a patent right is a matter of getting to a patent attorney or agent and filing first. This has the intended effect of forcing inventors to work hard at rapidly getting their ideas into the patent system. US law is directed against the policy of protecting the first to file. Working for the rights of the actual first inventor is a matter of American distinction and national pride since this also has a sense of justice added to the goal of improving the scientific arts.
Since there are many people who do not respect the rights of others, the patent system is not immune to the possibility of fraudulent priority claims. When this happens, the American system has a built in countermeasure, an Interference Hearing; this purges the system of the offending person by finding out some important information. For there to be a determination of who was the first to invent, the Hearing must find out the real date of the novelty and the actual filing of a patent application or the invention's physical modeling.
Theoretically, the American government aims at granting the patent monopoly right to the deserving party or parties since they first invented the novel invention or idea that has been reduced to practice. By promoting the interests of hard-working creative individuals, it is hoped that the financial windfall will thus provide a substantial reward that spurs more innovation. As a consequence, it is expected that better inventions will be created by hardworking inventors; since their ideas are duly protected by a system of temporary monopoly rights, they have a strong interest in making further improvements in their field of endeavor.
The first to invent modality has not been adopted world wide by local governments; in spite of this defect, they do indeed do have some kind of intellectual property rights for their citizens. In addition to local rights, agreements have been reached by many governments to contract international patent rights. There are a few accords of this sort including the the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, and The EPC headed by the European Patent Organization. There are pros and cons to each of these agreements but at a minimum they do provide some level of guaranteed protection to inventors.
by: Michael Josephs
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