Sunday, August 06, 2006

A little idea about patents

Ever wondered what a patent is?

I don't have a clear idea, but I have the over all picture.

Patents are just another set of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights again are laws that protect ideas that people have, and are genenrally not good to mess with. It is an umberalla term that is used to refer to the object of a variety of laws that includes copyright law, trademark law, etc. If you want to research on this I suggest looking though wikipedia. Click here.

If you have an invention and you know it somehow bebefits your society then you can go ahead and patent it. By doing so you are saying, "this is my invention; it is something revolutionary; I want to be the one to further develop on it. Others may not possess the aptitude to do so. Hence, this way I ensure that the society is benefitted in return."

So this is how the philosophy of patents work.

Now is it right to own software patents?