Patents differ significantly from copyrights and trademarks .
If you fail to pay the maintenance fee, your patent expires and you lose exclusive rights to your invention. Utility patents apply to new and useful processes, machines, manufactures, compositions of matter, or any new and useful improvement of one of these. Generally speaking, if your invention does something, you should apply for a utility patent. Design patents apply to new, original, and ornamental design for an article or manufacure. To highlight the difference between design and utility patents, consider the original Macintosh computer.