If you are an inventor, you may have thought about protecting your inventions. But what protections are available? One form of protection is to patent your invention. A utility patent confers the rights to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing a device or invention covered by the patent into the […]
In 1971 a microbiologist, Ananda Chakrabarty, working in a research laboratory of General Electric, created a bacterium capable of breaking down hydrocarbon components of crude oil. The genetically-engineered micro-organism held potential for use for the bioremediation of oil spills. The following year Chakrabarty filed a patent application in the United States Patent and Trademark Office […]