Patent law is the branch of intellectual property law that deals with new inventions.
Traditional patents
protect tangible scientific inventions, such as circuit boards, car engines, heating coils or zippers. A patent is a property right that gives the inventor the legal capacity to prevent others from making, using, or selling an invention for a specified period of time. Patents in the United States are governed by patent law (35 U.S. C. Code), which was established by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the USPTO). The most common type of patent is a utility patent.
Utility patents have a duration of twenty years from the date of filing, but are not enforceable until the day they are issued. Plant patents protect new varieties of plants that reproduce asexually. By law, the applicant must submit a patent application to the USPTO, where it will be reviewed by an examiner to determine if the invention is patentable. The law gives patent holders the right to exclude others from manufacturing, using, or selling the invention. These pages provide guidance on how to file a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A patent is not the right to create and use your invention.
It is the right to prevent others from manufacturing, using, or importing the invention claimed in the patent. Other patent laws are found in a variety of sources, including federal court decisions that have accumulated over 200 years. Four legal categories in Section 101 Non-legal exceptions to subject eligibility Overview of the first step of the Alice test Analyze the first step in search of abstract ideas Analyze the first step in search of natural phenomena Apply the test of markedly different characteristics General description: search for an inventive concept Evaluate the conventionality of the elements of the statement What is sufficient for the inventive concept? The machine test or transformation Responding to a legal refusal (outside of the four categories) Demonstrating patent eligibility in the first step Demonstrating patent eligibility in the second. Do you need more guidance? Check out our new Guide to Patent Applications: Guide to applying for patents. What rights does a patent create? What if you can't afford to enforce your patent rights? What are the advantages of patent pending status? What makes applying for a patent so expensive? What is the cost breakdown of a patent application? What is the cost of a design patent application? Can't I get a cheaper patent somewhere else? How to identify your invention (not the product I propose)? Should you trust invention presentation companies? What difference does the first to introduce a law make? What are the deadlines for filing a patent application? What is a patent search? How can searches avoid the waste of patent applications? How can searches improve patent applications? When is a search unnecessary (or even useless)? What is an interim request? Do interim requests save money? What are the benefits of a provisional application? Can I file an interim application without an attorney?A person shall be entitled to a patent unless (the claimed invention) has been patented, described in a printed publication, that is, for public use, is for sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. A patent litigator deals with issues related to specific patents, such as patent infringement lawsuits.
This standard aims to prevent patent holders from collecting a series of royalty payments for a single invention. Useful patents: this time-limited patent period is 20 years from the date of the earliest filing of the patent application (but this period may be extended by adjusting the patent term).A technology is obvious (and therefore not eligible for a patent) if a person with basic knowledge in the relevant field of technology, at the time the patent application was filed, had thought that the technology was obvious. If a patent already exists for the invention, a patent application for the invention, a description of the invention in a printed publication, or a product in use that already uses the process used by the invention, then it does not meet requirement of novelty. Apple claimed that Samsung had infringed some of its ideas for smartphones, but their descriptions didn't seem very specific.
The doctrine rooted in patent law, known as exhaustion doctrine, entitles holders to receive only one royalty payment per patented device. If a process is covered by a patent, any product that uses that patented process is infringing that patent. For example, drugs usually go through years of testing before they are ready for commercialization, but provisional patents last only 12 months.
