Patent Protection As An ‘Incentive For Innovation’

A patent is an exclusive right granted, to a person, who has invented a new and useful article or an improvement in an existing article or a new process of making an article for a fixed period of time.

The fundamental objective behind grant of a patent is to provide incentive for innovation. The incentive is the exploitation of the invention at the commercial level so as to enable the inventor to make profit from the invention thereby taking care of the huge expenses incurred and also to prevent him from keeping it as a trade secret. This acts as a catalyst for the inventor to invest capital in new line of manufacture or devise new processes of manufacture of an article and also precludes competitors to get the same results as that of the inventor’s work with impunity. Thus the principle of ‘incentive for innovation’ underlies the theory of patent protection.