How Are Patents Different From Copyrights And Trademarks?
All three – copyrights, trademarks and patents – emerge from the same fundamental legal requirement. These are types of intellectual property that protect the rights of inventors and creators. However, these three have certain marked differences.
The fundamental difference is that the patents safeguard rights over a concrete or conceptual invention, whereas the copyrights secure documents or images brought into existence by the author. On the contrary, trademark does not always need to be original, as it can include any word or logo that can identify a product.
Secondly, patents are the strongest forms of IPR, especially because they are guided by strict liability principles. This means that even if the infringer has no deliberate intention of infringement, he will be liable for the same. Thus patents offer greater safety against infringement, whereas copyright and trademarks provide for fair use and other exceptions.
A patent is usually awarded for a period of 20 years, after which it goes into the public domain. However, copyrights are usually valid for a longer period, for about 60-70 years from creation and trademarks carry on for even longer periods. Moreover, patents are more exhaustive and give broader safety than others. In other words, a copyright protects the mere expression of ideas, while patents can protect the underlying processes and ideas behind the invention as well.
Lastly, the processes for filing an application for these different legal mechanisms are also very different from each other. For example, while a patent application demands comprehensive information on the invention to be disclosed, a copyright application just needs a copy of the original work and trademark requires a database check for already existing marks that are currently in use.
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