Intellectual Property
A person is entitled to the exclusive commercial use of one's name, image, likeness, voice, and other indicia of identity
Patents necessarily involve public disclosure; trade secrets necessarily involve nondisclosure to public
Patentable inventions must meet threshold of nonobviousness; trade secrecy can protect obvious inventions, minor advances, mere information that is not an invention
only for literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and frames of audiovisual works
any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof
+ - (a) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention
+ - EXCEPTIION (b): A disclosure made 1 year or less before the effective filing date of a claimed invention shall not be prior art to the claimed invention under subsection (a)(1) if –
(A) the disclosure was made by the inventor or joint inventor or by another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor; or
(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such disclosure, been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor.
A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention. ...
prevents plaintiffs from using the doctrine of equivalents where ground was surrendered in prosecution