How Do Copyright and Patent Differ?
A copyright is given for work of a creative or artistic nature which has been fixed in a medium. Patents are granted to inventions or discoveries which were not known before. Even though both copyright and patents are covered under the term intellectual property, they have important differences from each other. Read more about copyright in the article What is Copyright? Copyrights now extend well beyond the life of a creator, so they can be bequeathed to someone else after the creator’s death. Patents must be applied for and awarded before the inventor gains exclusive rights, and those rights only exist for a limited time. However, a patent could be willed to someone by the inventor if it was still in effect. Unlike copyright, inventing something does not provide automatic protection for the invention. Until the filing process has started, another person could patent the same invention, and then they would be the holder of the exclusive rights to the invention. Read more about patents
