What is the difference between copyright and patents?

In Kansas, copyright and patents are two distinct legal tools that people and companies use to protect their intellectual property. Copyright refers to the legal right of an individual or company to own the exclusive rights to an original work of literature, art, music, or some other form of creative expression. It is a form of protection that grants authors and artists the sole ability to reproduce, perform, or distribute the work either in part or in its entirety. Patents, on the other hand, are a type of intellectual property right that grants the owner the exclusive right to make, use and sell an invention. It is typically issued by the government to protect the creators of inventions from having their ideas stolen by third parties. In general, copyright applies to creative works that are either expressed in a tangible form or intangible form, while patents generally have to do with certain types of inventions, such as machines, processes, compositions of matter, and so on. Copyright law is intended to protect creative expression, while patent law is designed to protect the inventors who make new things. Copyright law does not protect ideas, processes, or methods, but patent law does. Copyright protection lasts much longer (sometimes decades) while patent protection lasts for a shorter amount of time (sometimes only a few years).

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