Intellectual property: to better understand the judicial review of Apple - III

If intellectual property protects intellectual works that exist by themselves, industrial property; it is committed to protecting the products of intellectual activity that can be produced industrially.  This first type of products of intellectual activity is the invention, creation designed to solve a technical problem. The inventor may well decide to use the trade secret, which can give him a monopoly until a competitor does not happen to the task. The patent has been designed as a regulatory element; a form of encouragement to private innovation should eventually become public. In exchange for the release of its invention, the creator gets protection - a patent - providing it can enjoy the fruits of his work and punishing the copy.

Of course, the patent is framed: the work submitted must be new (private), inventive (non-obvious and unique solution to a problem) and applicable (technical and industrial). If these conditions are met, the inventor gets a limited monopoly in space (the country where the patent is valid) and time (usually 20 years) of his invention at the end of this monopoly, innovation falls into the public domain and may contribute to the common good.

In the meantime, the unauthorized copying of the invention is a crime that of infringement, the patentee can still cash in on its licensed invention.

The second type of products of intellectual activity in industrial scope is to create industrial ornamental character, appearance of a unique industrial design. This refers to the deposited designs, components of the process of commercialization of an invention, giving it special status. If the shape suggests a function, it is the patent of an invention it is responding to an industrial problem. If form and function are disconnected, the shape of the model is: sparkling water is protected, but the particular shape of the bottles of some manufacturers, which is their identity and can influence the purchase; it is protected. It could about the brands and marks and databases, patents and models but enough perhaps, at first. If the French law is very clear distinction between patent and model, U.S. law is more subtle: it speaks of patent and design patent. Copyright, design patent, patent: the semantic shift of the literary and artistic work industry is easier than elsewhere. Thomas Jefferson had made a point that ideas can not be deposited in the form of patents, but the American system has gradually derived: the boundary between industrial property and literary and artistic property becomes tenuous when it comes software, code, and writing.

The "software patent" term abuse is a reality that caused a real blockage of the American system of intellectual property. While only the exact source software can be protected in Europe under the PLA, the united States accept the protection of an algorithm. This failure has created a new system of protection of intellectual property, which is more liberating in the medium term but fully private long-term arsenal of patents against arsenal of patents, licensing agreements against licensing agreements so that the risk of copying leads, paradoxically, the preservation of innovation.