• Patents and patent drawings are subject to copyright under certain circumstances.flow chart symbol 1 image by pixelcarpenter from Fotolia.com
  
  Patent documents are subject to copyright, within the limitations of their purpose, which is to disclose an invention to the public. For that reason, copying and republishing the patent text in its entirety is considered fair use. However, the individual parts of a patent document (the text and the pictures) are subject to the same limitations when it comes to cutting and pasting as any other text. Note that the author is not a lawyer, and that this text does not consist a legal opinion.
  
  

Contractual Copyright Transfer

• As with all documents, when they are composed, they become subject to copyright. It does not matter who is the formal holder of the copyright, although it is usually the patent assignee, as the contract with the inventors and attorneys includes copyright transfer. The moral right will lie with the attorney preparing the document, however. This means that a number of contractual aspects, such as transfer of copyright, must be considered.
  
  

Copyright Notice

• Even though the moral copyright applies, the patent document is by its very nature intended to be public, and its purpose is to be re-publicized. U.S. law states that a copyright notice should be added to the document to designate the copyright. However, this is overridden by later changes to the copyright law, which makes the copyright occur when the work is created. For older works, it will still apply, though, and is part of the U.S. patent legislation. So if there is a copyright notice, it means the work is copyrighted. If there is none, it will still be subject to copyright, but it may be harder to enforce.
  
  

Fair Use

• The fair use doctrine applies, which is useful in case of derivative works, particularly in the patent world. Fair use dictate that you are allowed to quote or reuse text for the purpose of criticism, satire or similar reasons. But it is not allowed to take too much text from an old patent and use it. How much is "too much" is up to the judgment of the individual or the courts, should it come to that. No rule dictates that a certain number of words can be quoted before infringement on the copyright occurs.
  
  

Derivative Works

• A patent as a literary work can be subject to derivative works: works that are building on it to create new works. Ordinary-life examples of such are remakes of movies and translations of books. When making a derivative work, the new work has to be different from the old work. This means that if a patent builds on another patent, and could use substantially the same text but with different claims (for instance, claiming a business model for something, rather than a technical implementation), it would not be a derivative work from a copyright point of view if it re-used the text of the first patent. The text would have to be changed. Taking somebody else's patent text and putting in new claims is not allowed, even if it would be a new invention.