A patent is a set of the exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention.
The procedure for granting patents, the requirements and expectations placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements.
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Normally, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must be new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. In several countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods and mental acts.
The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right’ to prevent others from making, selling, using, or distributing the patented invention without permission.
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The word patent originates from the Latin ‘pattered’, which means “to lay open” (i.e., to make available for public inspection), and more direct as a shortened version of the term letters patent, which originally denote an open for public reading royal decree granting exclusive rights to a person
Definition of patent – The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application.
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The additional qualification utility patent is used in the United States to distinguish it from other types of patents (e.g. design patents) but should not be confused with utility models granted by other countries.
Examples of particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents.
Some other types of intellectual property rights are referred to as patents in some jurisdictions: industrial design rights are called design patents in some jurisdictions (they protect the visual design of objects that are not purely utilitarian), plant breeders’ rights are sometimes called plant patents, and utility models or Gebrauchsmuster are sometimes called petty patents or innovation patents.
This article relates primarily to the-patent for an invention, although so-called petty patents and utility models may also be granted for inventions.
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Certain grants made by the monarch in pursuance of the royal prerogative were sometimes called letters patent, which was a government notice to the public of a grant of an exclusive right to ownership and possession.
These were often grants of a patent-like monopoly and predate the modern origins of the patent system. For other uses of the term patent see notably land patents, which were land grants by early state governments in the USA, and printing patent, a precursor of modern copyright.
These meanings reflect the original meaning of letters patent that had a broader scope than current usage.
The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements.
Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must be new, non-obvious, and useful or industrially applicable. In many countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods, treatment of the human body and mental acts.
The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without permission. It is just a right to prevent others’ use.
A patent does not give the proprietor of the patent the right to use the patented invention, should it fall within the scope of an earlier patent.
Under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, patents should be available in WTO member states for any inventions, in all fields of technology, and the term of protection available should be the minimum twenty years. Different types of patents may have varying patent terms (i.e., durations).