"Many people ask: can ideas be patented? The short answer is no. Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television commercials, there is no effective way to protect an idea with any form of intellectual property protection. Copyrights protect expression and creativity, not innovation. Patents protect inventions. Neither copyrights or patents protect ideas. This is not to suggest that ideas are not valuable, but they are not valuable in the same way or sense that pop culture has led many to believe."
"It is, of course, axiomatic that an idea is an essential first step toward any invention. Nothing can or will happen without an idea, so in one sense ideas are a critical, and valuable, piece to the overall innovation equation. In and of themselves, however, ideas are not monetarily valuable. Without some identifiable manifestation of the idea there can be no intellectual property protection obtained and no exclusive rights will flow."
Ideas alone receive no intellectual property protection under patent or copyright law. Copyright protects expression and creativity, while patents protect inventions; neither grants exclusive rights to raw ideas. An idea must be manifested in an identifiable form to qualify for patenting or copyright. Without a patent, pending application, or enforceable confidentiality agreement, ideas remain free for others to use. Non-disclosure agreements protect only parties who accept confidentiality obligations and provide contractual remedies if breached, but do not preserve secrecy after disclosure. Trade secret protection ends when secrecy is lost. Effective protection requires tangible development, formal filings, or binding confidentiality commitments.
Read at IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
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