What You Can Patent
Who Has the Most Toys? With 1,093 patents to his name, Thomas Edison (1847-1931) remains the most prolific inventor in U.S. history. He received his first patent, for an electrical voting machine, at the age of 21. In 1876, he set up an invention lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and set a schedule of one small invention every 10 days and one major invention every six months. Among many other inventions, Edison is the father of the light bulb, the phonograph and motion pictures with sound. Trailing behind Edison are Jerome Lemelson and Edwin Land. Jerome Lemelson (1923-1997) held 557 patents, and played a major part in the development of camcorders, CD players, word-processing programs, Walkmans, fax machines and automated industrial machines, among many other devices. Edwin Land (1909-1991) held 535 patents in his life, and is best known for his instant-photography techniques, which are used in Polaroid cameras. |
In patent law, the term "invention" is defined loosely so that it can encompass a wide variety of objects. Obviously, if patents have to apply to things that don't exist yet, then the legal language must be fairly vague. In addition to standard technological machines and machine advancements, you can also patent certain computer programs, industrial processes and unique designs (such as tire or shoe-tread patterns). While none of the elements in these creations are new, the inventor may have combined them in a unique and innovative way. In the language of patent law, this constitutes an invention.
Some sorts of ideas are considered outside the realm of patents. No matter how innovative and beneficial they may be, certain notions are automatically public property the minute they are uncovered. The most prevalent examples of this are discoveries in the natural world. Scientists cannot patent laws of the universe, even though defining those laws may revolutionize a particular industry or change how we live. Einstein's Law of Relativity, for example, revolutionized the world of physics and will be forever linked with the man who devised it, but it has never been owned by anybody. This principle existed long before humans did, so, logically, it cannot be any person's intellectual property.
Scientists cannot patent a newly discovered plant or animal, either, though they may be able to patent a new plant or animal that was produced through genetic engineering. This is similar to the patenting of processes and computer programs: A genetic engineer didn't create any of the parts, but the combination of these parts may be novel and nonobvious, and therefore patentable
In addition to giving proper credit to individual inventors, patents help out humanity in general. In the next section, we'll see why patents are so important to a society.
