Commercialization+of+Technology

[ placeholder for technology products exercise ]

Patents
A patent is an exclusive award of monopoly-like rights to the use of an invention. 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 of the patent holder (and thus the comparison to a monopoly).

Patent laws usually require that, for an invention to be patentable, it must be //**novel**//, //**non-obvious**//, and //**useful**//. Judging patentability is one aspect of the official [|examination] of a [|patent application] performed by a [|patent examiner] and may be tested in post-grant patent litigation.
 * [|Patentable subject matter], i.e., a kind of subject-matter eligible for patent protection
 * [|Novel] (i.e. at least some aspect of it must be new)
 * [|Non-obvious] (in [|United States patent law] ) or involve an [|inventive step] (in [|European patent law] )
 * [|Useful] (in U.S. patent law) or be susceptible of [|industrial application] (in European patent law [|[1]] )

Prior to [|filing] a patent application, [|inventors] sometimes obtain a [|patentability opinion] from a [|patent agent] or [|patent attorney] regarding whether an invention satisfies the substantive conditions of patentability.

Patent protection means that the invention cannot be commercially **made, used, distributed or sold ** without the patent owner's **consent. ** These **patent ** **rights ** are usually enforced in a court, which, in most systems, holds the authority to stop **patent infringement **.

Mask Work
In United States intellectual property law, a // **mask work** // is a two or three-dimensional layout or topography of an integrated circuit (IC or "chip"), i.e. the arrangement on a chip of semiconductor devices such as transistors and passive electronic components such as resistors and interconnections. The layout is called a mask work because, in photolithographic processes, the multiple etched layers within actual ICs are each created using a mask, called the photomask, to permit or block the light at specific locations, sometimes for hundreds of chips on a wafer simultaneously.

Because of the functional nature of the mask geometry, the designs cannot be effectively protected under copyright law (except perhaps as decorative art). Similarly, because individual lithographic mask works are not clearly protectable subject matter, they also cannot be effectively protected under patent law, although any processes implemented in the work may be patentable. So since the 1990s, national governments have been granting copyright-like exclusive rights conferring time-limited exclusivity to reproduction of a particular layout.

Integrated Circuit layout designs are usually the result of an enormous investment, both in terms of the time of highly qualified experts, and financially. The possibility of copying by photographing each layer of an integrated circuit and preparing masks for its production on the basis of the photographs obtained was the main reason for the introduction of legislation for the protection of layout-designs.