Product Patent Vs. Process Patent
A patent grants intellectual property rights for manufacturing, marketing and selling a product. An inventor, or the company he works for, can obtain a patent from the government via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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Product Patent
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A product patent provides benefits to an inventor of a tangible object. For example, if a person creates a new computer chip, computer companies that use that chip in their products must pay the inventor for every product sold.
Process Patent
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Process patents are only granted to man-made processes. Natural processes that are discovered, such as the laws of motion or physics, cannot be patented. A process can be patented if it is a newly invented way of doing something. The definition from the Supreme Court is "a mode of treatment of certain materials to produce a given result."
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Duration
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Patent rights are not unlimited. While a patent is in place, the inventor has exclusive rights to his product or process. However, the patent expires after 20 years.
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