- •Module II
- •Engineering
- •Lesson 1
- •Engineering - what's it all about?
- •It’s time to have fun!
- •Lesson 2 engineering materials
- •Metals and alloys
- •Lesson 3 mechanisms
- •Mechanisms
- •Scissors
- •Lesson 4 safety at work
- •Safety signs and colour at work
- •Accident investigation
- •Lesson 5 lasers
- •We have the solution! our new 1500 watt cnc-controlled laser cutter is at your disposal
- •We have the solution! our new 1500 watt cnc-controlled laser cutter is at your disposal
- •Lesson 2 bizarre inventions
- •Bizarre inventions
- •Student a
- •Student b
- •Lesson 3
- •Inventors
- •Who invented the X-ray?
- •Patent protection
- •What you can patent
- •Lesson 4 robots - the future is now
- •Lesson 5 practical innovations
- •Cork floors, old pickle barrels
- •Technology
- •Lesson 1
- •Modern technology
- •The advantages and disadvantages of technology
- •Anonymous no more You can’t hide—from anybody
- •It’s time to have fun!
- •Lesson 2 nanotechnology
- •Ibm discoveries add promise for nanotech
- •Nanotechnology unfolds futuristic green cars
- •Lesson 3 alternate fuel
- •Asu professors working on cost effective fuel conversion process
- •Alternative fuel sources
- •Solar powered cars
- •Lesson 4 space
- •Life in space
- •Lesson 5 home movie
- •Home movie viewing gets jumstart with new technologies
- •Communication
- •Lesson 1
- •Mobile television
- •Lessons from south korea’s experiment with mobile tv
- •The advantages of mobile tv
- •Estimates peg digital mobile television to reach two-thirds of us homes by 2012
- •Lesson 2 radio
- •Wireless takes many forms
- •What is a wireless device?
- •Lesson 3 a world of connections
- •A world of connections
- •Lesson 4 mobile phones
- •Building the green mobile phone
- •To do with the price of fish
- •Lesson 5 the means of communication in the past, today and the future
- •Is the tide turning for twitter and facebook? one in four young people is 'bored' with social media
- •The blackberry riots Rioters used BlackBerrys against the police; can police use them against rioters?
- •Technical progress and the environment
- •Lesson 1
- •We and the environment
- •Lesson 2 paying for environmental damage
- •Paying for environmental damage
- •Lesson 3 protecting the environment
- •China plan to protect environment
- •Lesson 4 green technology
- •Green day
- •Lesson 5 technological disasters
- •Hungary threatened by 'ecological catastrophe' as toxic sludge escapes factory
- •Japan's nuclear catastrophe
- •Additional lessons
- •Appendix 1 making a presentation
- •Introduction
- •Conclusion
- •Questions
- •Appendix 2 writing a summary
- •Useful phrases
Patent protection
Patents are the most complicated type of intellectual property, as well as the most restrictive. To patent an invention, you have to meet a number of requirements. First of all, the invention must be sufficiently novel. That is, it must be substantially unlike anything that is already patented, has already been on the market or has been written about in a publication. In fact, you can't even patent your own invention if it has been on the market or discussed in publications for more than a year.
The vast majority of inventions are actually improvements on existing technology, not wholly new items. The camcorder, for example, is essentially a combination of a video camera and a tape recorder, but it is a unique idea to combine them into one unit. It was so innovative, in fact, that when Jerome Lemelson first submitted the idea to the patent office in 1977, it was rejected as an absurd notion. When the invention was eventually patented, it launched a flood of portable video machines. If you search for the term "camcorder" in the U.S. Patent Office's database, you will find more than a thousand separate patents. A modern camcorder is a combination of hundreds of patented inventions.
Adaptations of earlier inventions can be patented as long as they are nonobvious, meaning that a person of standard skill in the area of study wouldn't automatically come up with the same idea upon examining the existing invention. For example, you can't patent the concept of making a toaster that can handle more pieces of bread at once, because that is only taking an existing invention and making it bigger. For an invention to be patented, it must be innovative to the point that it wouldn't be obvious to others.
Another condition for patenting something is that the invention is "useful." Generally speaking, this means that the invention serves some purpose and that it actually works. You couldn't patent a random configuration of gears, for example, if it didn't do anything in particular. You also wouldn't be able to patent a time machine if you couldn't construct a working model. Unproven ideas generally fall into the realm of science fiction, and so are protected only by copyright law. The "useful" clause may also be interpreted as a prohibition against inventions that can only be used for illegal and/or immoral practices.
What you can patent
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.
Task 8. Prepare a presentation on any inventors.