If you are an intellectual property owner, you should protect your rights. If you are a user, you should respect them. It is just as wrong to steal intellectual property as it is to break into a home, steal a car, or rob a bank. Throughout history, inventions have helped people discover new worlds, build communities, develop resources, increase productivity, cure diseases, ease burdens, and enjoy life to the fullest. Our Nation's founders recognized the importance of patents to protect the rights of inventors and included provisions for them in the Constitution .
New inventions lead to new technologies, create new jobs, and improve our quality of life .
Today, America's inventive spirit is one of our most treasured and envied assets, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office works to record, share, and preserve it. A patent helps an inventor to make money from his or her invention by allowing only the patentee or those who get his or her permission to make, use, import, sell or offer to sell the invention. Thus it encourages investing in research - which helps the nation. A patent gives an inventor the right to exclude all others from making, using, importing, selling or offering to sell the invention for up to 20 years without the inventor's permission. This gives the inventor the opportunity to produce and market the invention himself, or license others to do so, and to make a profit .