Patents As Property
According to Article One, Section 8(8) of the U.S. Constitution, Congress is granted the power to secure for limited times to ... inventors the exclusive right to their ... discoveries. Therefore, patents implementing that provision would have to grant temporary rights residing only in the inventors. Nonetheless, patents are now treated like property rights, so that they may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned, transferred, given away, abandoned, actively developed, or held as investments without being developed. Just as there is no legal requirement that owners of real property develop their vacant land, there is likewise no legal requirement that patent owners develop their inventions.
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Famous quotes containing the word property:
“General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)