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.

Exclusive Non-Exclusive
Under an exclusive license, a patent owner transfers all indicia of ownership to the licensee only retaining the title to the patent. By granting a non-exclusive license, the patent owner essentially promises not to sue the licensee for patent infringement.
From the point of view of the patent owner, he surrenders all rights under the patent (including the right to sue for infringement and the right to license) to the license. Some people think that by acquiring a non-exclusive license the licensee acquires the freedom to operate in the space protected by the licensed patent, but this may or may not be the case.
The licensee steps into the shoes of the patent owner and acquire the right to sub-license the patent and sue for patent infringement. However, the exclusivity can be limited by a field of use. That means that the licensee gets a promise from the patent owner that the patent will not be licensed to anyone else in a stipulated field of use. It depends on whether or not the licensee’s products infringe other patents.

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.

Advantage Disadvantage
Not all inventors want to make or sell products or designs. Patent licensing lets you profit from the rights to your invention. You can collect royalties from sales. Soliciting Manufacturers
Limited Risk Low Success Rate
Global Distribution Limited Time Period
Eliminating Patent Infringement -

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.

Licence Specification
Apache licenses The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).The Apache License, Version 2.0 requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer. Like other free software licenses, the license allows the user of the software the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software, under the terms of the license, without concern for royalties. This makes ALv2 a FRAND-RF license. The ASF and its projects release the software they produce under the Apache License and many non-ASF projects are also using the ALv2.
GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software. The license was originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project, and grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are widely used examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use.
GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate software released under the LGPL into their own (even proprietary) software without being required by the terms of a strong copyleft license to release the source code of their own components. The license only requires software under the LGPL be modifiable by end users via source code availability. For proprietary software, code under the LGPL is usually used in the form of a shared library, so that there is a clear separation between the proprietary and LGPL components. The LGPL is primarily used for software libraries, although it is also used by some stand-alone applications.
BSD licenses BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and redistribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have reciprocity share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. The original version has since been revised and its descendants are more properly termed modified BSD licenses. The BSD license is a simple license that merely requires that all code be licensed under the BSD license if redistributed in source code format.
MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, an excellent license compatibility. The MIT license permits reuse within proprietary software provided that all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms and the copyright notice. The MIT license is also compatible with many copyleft licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL); MIT licensed software can be integrated into GPL software, but not the other way around.
Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that they have created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of their own work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

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

Creative Commons License
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.

Creative Commons License
The Second Hand by Karan Tanna is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.