Patents and copyrights are two different types of intellectual property rights. U.S. patent law gives the patent holder the right to prevent others from making, using, selling or importing a program that performs the same function or process as the patented software, even if the code is entirely different from the patented software, whereas copyright law protects only the code as it is written. It is possible to protect some software under both copyright and patent law. Another significant difference between patent and copyright for software is in the definition of an inventor versus an author. For more information on patents and inventorship, see "IP Essentials for Researchers" on the UC web site