Consumer & Gadgets

Sony eyeing robot friend for game players

Computer games are often more fun when friends are there to share the experience. A Sony PlayStation team wants to make sure that at times when players don't have their buddies around in person, they can turn to a robot friend ...

Engineering

Patent patter: Tanks not on Apple's to-do list

Did an error serve a military vehicle patent to the stylish company that brings you phones and featherweight PCs to cry for if not die for? Lawyers said a vehicle patent assigned to Apple was in error, reported Patently Apple ...

Hi Tech & Innovation

Sony patent filing talks about glove interface object

Some patent filings make viewers scratch their heads and wonder if the inventions could possibly be viable, functional and commercially successful now or in a million years. A patent filing recently made public by the US ...

Energy & Green Tech

Researchers develop an oxygen-ion battery

Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous today, but that does not mean that they are the best solution for all areas of application. TU Wien has now succeeded in developing an oxygen-ion battery that has some important advantages. ...

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Patent

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.

The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must be new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. In many countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods and mental acts. The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without permission.

Under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, patents should be available in WTO member states for any inventions, in all fields of technology, and the term of protection available should be minimum twenty years. Different types of patents may have varying patent terms (i.e., durations).

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