Important Terms
What is Intellectual Property ?
Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.
IP is protected in law by, for example, patents, copyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. By striking the right balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest, the IP system aims to foster an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.
What is an Invention ?
An invention is a research result that potentially can be commercially exploited. The invention can be patented if it meets patent law criteria for patentability. A patent is a form of ownership of the invention (a legal document) that protects the invention and patent holder. It gives the patent holder the right to prevent or allow others to exploit the invention for a limited period, typically 20 years.
I reffered various FabRiCademy Project. I was amazed to see this could even be done. I have linked projects which I liked below.
What is a Patent?
A patent is a form of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, selling, and importing an invention for a limited period of years, in exchange for publishing an enabling public disclosure of the invention. In most countries patent rights fall under civil law and the patent holder needs to sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce his or her rights. In some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; in others they are irrelevant.
Process to file patent
The procedure for granting patents, requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a granted patent application must include one or more claims that define the invention. A patent may include many claims, each of which defines a specific property right. These claims must meet relevant patentability requirements, such as novelty, usefulness, and non-obviousness.
Conditions for invention to be patent
There are four main conditions for an invention to be patentable:
Novelty: The invention must have objective newness and must not already be known in an accessible form from anywhere in the world.
Inventive step: An invention must involve an inventive step. This means that it must lie beyond what is obvious to an average professional in the field.
Industrial applicability: The invention must be industrially applicable and the inventor must be able to describe how others can reproduce the invention.
Within patent law: The invention must not be of such a nature as to be excluded from patentability in patent law.
Patent in India
Patent registering organisation in India is Intellectual Property India. you can visit and learn more about patent laws in India using link below.
Important things to keep in mind while filing patent in India :
Patent process in India is complex and goes through various stages. The diagram below shows the strcucture of the process.
To learn more about each step follow the link given below :
For learning about salient features of Indian Patent Act And key points. Follow link below.
To refer pantent laws of various other counntries, follow links below.
What is Copyright ?
A copyright is a collection of rights that automatically vest to someone who creates an original work of authorship – like a literary work, song, movie or software. These rights include the right to reproduce the work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies, and to perform and display the work publicly.
Open Source License
An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial companies to review and modify the source code, blueprint or design for their own customization, curiosity or troubleshooting needs.
Open-source licensed software is mostly available free of charge, though this does not necessarily have to be the case. Licenses which only permit non-commercial redistribution or modification of the source code for personal use only are generally not considered as open-source licenses.
However, open-source licenses may have some restrictions, particularly regarding the expression of respect to the origin of software, such as a requirement to preserve the name of the authors and a copyright statement within the code, or a requirement to redistribute the licensed software only under the same license (as in a copyleft license).
One popular set of open-source software licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) based on their Open Source Definition (OSD).
To learn about types of open sourse licences I referred following link.
Chosing Right Licence for Final Project
The important thing to know before chosing licence is that you should know what you want to do with your project/code/design etc.
As an individual It is difficult to file a patent. Since my project comes under pneumatics which is widely used. Also it includes inspiration from other projects with various new addition, For me as a beginner it would be good to start with an open source licence. It could be used as educational purpose for personal use and not commercially.
Thus I decided to go with Creative Commons licence which is widely used. You can visit Creative Commons using link below.
By step Instruction on how to get licence is as below :
Step 1 : Go to creativecommons.org
Step 2 : Go to 'Share Your Work'.
Step 3 : Scroll down a bit. Read 'Choose a licence' instructions. Click 'Get Started'.
Step 4 : Choose specification that you want under your licence..
Step 4A : (Optional) You can Attribute your work and add name to be read by machine.
Step 5 : Copy the code in the box and paste on your website or code or any digital media.
Now you have Creative Commons licence. You can explore other features on the same website.
My Licence for Final Project
The Second Hand by
Karan Tanna is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Possiblities
This project could help the people with difficulties in motion of fingers could be rehabed or helped.
Also with help of usage of soft robotics, motion would be accurate and varied and not be limited by joints in hard robotics.
Probablities
This could be further developed and further can be made availabe for people who need it at low cost.
The glove could be further integrated to solve many other problems and could be integrated with other devices.
Final Project Presentation Draft
What Did I learn ?
After referring many documents and articles I learned about differennt types of licences and patent laws in different countries.
From the interferences of those I figured out what licence is good for me.
Also I visited different websites to know what each open source licence offers.