Patent: A Powerful form of IPR

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are in vogue. Every knowledge worker, enterprise, economy is realising its importance and role in global environment. Patent, one of the most famous form of IPR is proving to be very powerful means in safeguarding one's creative ideas and expressions. Here is an illustration. The software giant Microsoft has been ordered to pay penalty and stop selling its popular word processing product MS Word for its patent infringement. According to US courts, the Microsoft has been asked to do so because it has violated a patent owned by a another company i4i. The patent is related to XML. Microsoft has used the patented technology without paying license fee to i4i