If I own the patent to A+B+C, and later A+B is granted a patent, can I still manufacture A+B+C If I manufacture A+B+C, then I would be infringing upon A+B, no?
What the discussion has missed is that how elements are interconnected and interrelated is itself an element. If A and B are things, some C must define their interrelationships. Image a 4-wheel car exists and what everyone knows is that to be stable a car needs 4 wheels in a rectangular arrangement. Someone invents a 3-wheel car by realizing stabilization can be achieved by only one rear wheel if it’s located between the front two. The four wheel car had three wheels but it isn’t a 3-wheeled car. The claim for the 3 wheeled invention needs to not say a car having 3-wheels. That already exists. But a car balanced as a working 3-wheeled car could be claimed. So A + B + C + D existed but someone figured out how to make a workable A + B + C and has a patentable invention. The seeming contradiction is solved by noting that the first case was really A,B,C,D and X where X defines the relationship between the first four elements. The new invention has A,B,C and Y. It is novel and not a subset of the prior art.
A patent grants the holder exclusive rights to make, use and sell the patented item. As such, you can look at the patented object, you can document it, you can study it, you can draw up plans for it. A patent cannot be granted unless the applicant discloses what exactly is being patented. So you can get all the details of a patent from the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office). You cannot, however, make one without infringement unless you have permission, usually a license, from the patent holder. Now I am not in any way recommending this but as a practical matter, if you, as an individual, were to make such a piece of furniture incorporating a patented feature for your use, how would they know? There are no &quot;patent police&quot; going from door-to-door looking for infringers. On the other hand if you were to begin selling copies of this piece at your small shop, that might come to the patent holder's attention and they might take action against you.
You can't You agreed: by submitting Materials in any form to the Company, in addition to other provisions of the Terms, you automatically grant Company a royalty-free, world-wide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, and assignable right and license to use, copy, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, edit, translate, create derivative works from, transmit, distribute, publicly display and publicly perform such Materials for the purpose of displaying and promoting the Materials on any website operated by, and in any related marketing materials produced by, the Company and its affiliates. They can keep and use your data forever and give it to whoever they want. The clause you quote doesn't alter that. All it says is that once a year, if you ask, they will tell you what information they shared and with whom. If they feel like it they will tell you how to get the information deleted.
The licence does not allow you to do this However, copyright law may. You work is (probably) an adaptation within the terms of the licence and these are not allowed. So, put the licence aside and consider if your use is fair use or fair dealing; if it is, you are allowed to do it notwithstanding the licence.
If Alice, Bob, and Cassandra are working on the program and releasing it as a joint work, the copyright statement should reflect it: Copyright (c) 2017 Alice, Bob, Cassandra If, on the other hand, Bob and Cassandra are taking advantage of the "modify" clause of the MIT license to create derivative works, the copyright statements are required by the license to be separate: Copyright (c) 2017 Alice Copyright (c) 2017 Bob Copyright (c) 2017 Cassandra
I don't know the specifics of this invention, but it's important to remember that the novelty and non-obviousness of an invention is made as of the date of the patent application (or earlier priority date, not applicable here). In this case, that would be September 5, 1979. So you'd have to look specifically at what art existed as of that date (actually, one year prior to that date) and show that the invention was obvious and not novel in light of that prior art. It would take more than a general claim that it's obvious, for example. The practices followed by the PTO in determining novelty and obviousness in accordance with the law is set out in the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure, chapter 700 ("Examination of patents"). You might find that an interesting read. The current release (Ninth Edition, Revision 07.2015) is here; the edition in effect in 1979 would have been the Fourth Edition, here. As an aside, the term of the patent is not 20 years from publication. The term under today's law is 20 years from initial filing date, not from publication. Had that law been in effect for this patent, it would have expired in September 5, 1999 (which it actually did, as noted below). Prior to June 8, 1995, US patent term was based on the date of issue plus 17 years; in this case to January 5, 1999. But under terms of the 1995 law, any patent applied for prior to June 8, 1995 got the greater of those two terms; so we're back to September 5, 1999 again. (And just for completeness, there is also the matter of periodic maintenance fees that today need to be paid to keep a patent in force; but that didn't start until December 1980, and wouldn't have applied to this patent, which was filed prior to the institution of maintenance fees.)
Does this mean that if the employee leaves the company, and then creates or gain an intellectual property right, does the company own that right ? No. The reference to &quot;the future&quot; pertains only to the IPRs of inventions that ensued in the course of his employment. Even if the employer alleged that the clause also encompasses post-employment creations and/or post-employment acquisitions of IPR, such extension would be unconscionable (and therefore null and void).
Adding to what Martin Bonner said: If you are a startup, and your grand plan is to be bought by a big company for a lot of money, and that big company thinks your use of React makes it risky to buy you, then you will lose out. It doesn't matter whether there is a risk, what matters is whether a potential buyer believes there is a risk. And if that is your plan, then you need to re-read Martin's answer from the point of view of a bigger company. You may not have any valuable patents, but that bigger company might. If I have an LLC with no money, then I can say "I don't care if Facebook sues me for 100 millions, I'll just let the LLC go bankrupt and start another one". If the company is worth millions or more, then the risk is much higher.