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.
Read more about this topic: US Patent
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