About Patents and Trademarks
What cannot
be patented
(Excerpted from The Investor's
Desktop Companion: A Guide to
Successfully Marketing and Protecting
Your Ideas by Richard C. Levy.
Visible Ink Press: Chicago, 1991)
Many things are not open to
patent protection.
The laws of nature, physical
phenomena, and abstract ideas
are not patentable subject matter.
A new mineral discovered in
the earth or a new plant found
in the wild is not patentable
subject matter. Likewise, Einstein
could not patent his celebrated
E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented
the law of gravity. Such discoveries
are manifestations of nature,
free to all people and reserved
exclusively to none.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954
excludes the patenting of inventions
useful solely in the utilization
of special nuclear material or
atomic energy for atomic weapons.
The patent law specifies that
the subject matter must be "useful."
The term "useful" in this connection
refers to the condition that the
subject matter has a useful purpose
and that also includes functionality,
i.e., a machine which will not
operate to perform the intended
purpose would not be called useful,
and therefore would not be granted
patent protection.
Interpretations of the statute
by the courts have defined the
limits of the field of subject
matter which can be patented.
Thus it has been held that methods
of doing business and printed
matter cannot be patented.
In the case of mixtures of ingredients,
such as medicines, a patent cannot
be granted unless the mixture
is more than the effect of its
components. It is of interest
to note that so-called "patent
medicines" are generally
not patented; the phrase "patent
medicine" in this connection
does not mean that the medicine
has been awarded a patent.
What
Can Be Patented
|
