Patent law

United States
The primary goal of the U.S. patent system is to encourage innovation and commercialization of technological advances. To this end, the patent system offers an incentive to inventors to publicly disclose their inventions in exchange for the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, offering for sale or selling the inventions throughout the United States or importing the inventions into the United States.

The patent system serves as an important complement to the copyright system for computer and software innovations by providing protection for functional aspects of these innovations. Unlike copyright protection which attaches automatically at the moment of fixation, an inventor must

specifically request protection by filing a patent application and establishing that the invention meets all of the statutory requirements of patentability. Rights are obtained by filing a patent application with the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), and proceeding through an examination process.