If they could prove their innovation, it would be their intellectual property. By your thinking then, all human kind is an artifact.... But technically there are many types of artifacts....we usually speak of archaeological artifacts but things like a defect on your computer monitor is an artifact...
Here is Wikepedia's list:
* Artifact (archaeology), any object made or modified by a human culture, and later recovered by an archaeological endeavor
* Artifact (error), an error or misrepresentation introduced by a technique and/or technology
* Visual artefact, unintended graphics-related errors or noise caused by software or hardware bugs.
* Artifact (medical imaging), misrepresentations of tissue structures seen in medical images
* Artifact (observational), any perceived distortion or other data error caused by the instrument of observation
* Artifact (software development), one of many kinds of tangible byproduct produced during the development of software
* Compression artifact, data compression artifact in computer science, resulting from lossy data compression
* Cultural artifact, a human-made object which gives information about the culture of its creator and users
* Document artifact, an instantiation of a document.
* Digital artifact, a visible defect in a digital photo or video picture
* Iatrogenic artifact, a medical problem created by medical treatment
* Social artifact, a product of individuals or groups (social beings) or of their social behavior
* Sonic artifact, in sound and music production, sonic material that is accidental or unwanted, resulting from the editing of another sound
* Virtual artifact, objects in the digital environment
* Project artifact, documented outputs and work products specific to a project implementation
* Artefact (band) black metal band from France
* Artifact (band), a band from Norway
* The Artifact (Eureka), a fictional object appearing in the TV series Eureka
* Artifact (fantasy), in the fantasy genre, is usually a magical object so powerful that it cannot be duplicated or destroyed by ordinary means |
