EOC Week 5: Patent Claim

Patents have a life span of 17 or 20 years. To keep them valid, companies must pay maintenance fees every four years. Once they expire, the holder is expected to remove the numbers from products.  I think its important to always document and protect your own work and ideas specially in today's society.  If you aren't keeping up by protecting your idea's by a creating a patent, someone else could easily construct what is rightfully yours and call it their own.  I found this article very interesting because I thought once you have received a patent for your creation nobody can come around and claim its their own.  That's where I was mistaken, in order for your patent to stay protected you have to ensure its still current every 4 years because sometimes patents expire.  If you don't protect your patent you are running the risk of either being fined $500 for failure to renewing or even worse someone can come and still your creation and sell it else where without your consent.  Technically they aren't at fault because your patent has expired leaving it free for others to claim their own.