Patent

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Intellectual
property law
 
Primary rights
Copyright  ·  Patent  ·  Trademark
Industrial design rights
Utility model
Geographical indication
Trade secret · Authors' rights
Related rights · Moral rights
Sui generis rights
Database right · Mask work
Plant breeders' right
Supplementary
protection certificate
Indigenous intellectual property
Related topics
Criticism · more

A patent (pronounced /ˈpætənt/ or /ˈpeɪtənt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) 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 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, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. In many 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, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without permission.[1]

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,[2] and the term of protection available should be the minimum twenty years.[3] Different types of patents may have varying patent terms (i.e., durations).

Definition

The term patent usually refers to a right granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. 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.

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.

Etymology

The word patent originates from the Latin patere, which means "to lay open" (i.e., to make available for public inspection), and more directly as a shortened version of the term letters patent, which originally denoted an open for public reading royal decree granting exclusive rights to a person.

History

In 500 BC, in the Greek city of Sybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), "encouragement was held out to all who should discover any new refinement in luxury, the profits arising from which were secured to the inventor by patent for the space of a year."[5]

The Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi received a three-year patent for a barge with hoisting gear, that carried marble along the Arno River in 1421.[6] In 1449, King Henry VI granted the first patent with a license of 20 years to John of Utynam for introducing the making of colored glass to England.[7]

Patents in the modern sense originated in 1474, when the Republic of Venice enacted a decree that new and inventive devices, once put into practice, had to be communicated to the Republic to obtain the right to prevent others from using them.[8]

England followed with the Statute of Monopolies in 1623 under King James I, which declared that patents could only be granted for "projects of new invention." During the reign of Queen Anne (1702–1714), the lawyers of the English Court developed the requirement that a written description of the invention must be submitted.[9] The patent system in many other countries, including Australia, is based on British law and can be traced back to the Statute of Monopolies.^{[citation needed]}

In France, patents were granted by the monarchy and by others institutions like the "Maison du Roi".^{[citation needed]} The Academy examined novelty.[10] Examinations were generally done in secret with no requirement to publish a description of the invention. Actual use of the invention was deemed adequate disclosure to the public.[11] The modern French patent system was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination since inventor's right was considered as a natural one [12]

In the United States, during the so-called colonial period and Articles of Confederation years (1778–1789), several states adopted patent systems of their own. The first Congress adopted a Patent Act, in 1790, and the first patent was issued under this Act on July 31, 1790 (to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a potash production technique).

Law

Patent law
(patents for inventions)
 
Overviews
Patents · History
Economics · Criticism
Processes
Application · Prosecution
Licensing · Infringement
Patentability
Patentable subject matter
Novelty  · Utility
Industrial applicability
Person skilled in the art
Prior art · Inventorship
Additional requirements
Sufficiency of disclosure
Unity of invention
By region / country
Europe
Japan
United States
Subject-matter
Biological patent · Gene patent
Business method · Tax patent
Chemical patent · Software patent

Category
List of concepts

Effects

A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention.[13] Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others[13] from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date [3] subject to the payment of maintenance fees. A patent is, in effect, a limited property right that the government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

The rights conveyed by a patent vary country-by-country. For example, in the United States, a patent covers research, except "purely philosophical" inquiry. A U.S. patent is infringed by any "making" of the invention, even a making that goes toward development of a new invention—which may itself become subject of a patent.

A patent being an exclusionary right does not, however, necessarily give the owner of the patent the right to exploit the patent.[13] For example, many inventions are improvements of prior inventions that may still be covered by someone else's patent.[13] If an inventor takes an existing, patented mouse trap design, adds a new feature to make an improved mouse trap, and obtains a patent on the improvement, he or she can only legally build his or her improved mouse trap with permission from the patent holder of the original mouse trap, assuming the original patent is still in force. On the other hand, the owner of the improved mouse trap can exclude the original patent owner from using the improvement.