What is a patent?
A patent is a monopoly awarded to the owner of a new and previously undisclosed invention. It lasts for a limited period (generally up to 20 years), allowing the owner to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention without his/ her permission. Patents are used to protect the way something works, rather than the way it looks (unless the look is required so that it works).
Patents are awarded by individual governments on a country by country basis. Patents are geographically limited in their scope, and patents which are ultimately granted only give rights in those countries in which they are granted.
Who can obtain a patent
Anybody can apply for a patent, provided he owns the invention either through being the inventor or through having a legal entitlement from the inventor.
In order to obtain this exclusive right, patent owners have to file patent applications describing their inventions in full. These are initially kept secret but are eventually published.
For the most part, if protection
is required in a particular country, it is necessary
to apply specifically to the patent office of
that country for a patent. There are, however
a few systems, e.g. the European Patent Convention,
where a central body is able to grant a patent
effective in several countries. There is also
a system, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT),
whereby an applicant may file a single international
application specifying a large number of countries
(up to 137 as at 29 June 2007). However, whilst
this allows central filing and a central search
and examination, it does not provide any granted
patents. The application must still enter a national
phase with the patent offices of the individual
countries of interest.
Priority
If an owner of an invention files his first application for that invention in a first country, then he has twelve months from that time to file applications for the same invention in other countries, "claiming priority" from that first filing. The effect of this is that his application is treated in those other countries as having been filed on the same date as it was filed in the first country, for the purpose of determining novelty and inventive step. It should be noted that this is not available to all countries and nationalities - usually only where the relevant countries are all members of the Paris Convention or of the World Trade Organization (or both).
What can be patented?
Patents are generally intended to protect new
and inventive products or processes. For an invention
to be patentable, it must, in general, be novel,
inventive and of practical use or industrial applicability.
To be novel, the invention cannot have been disclosed
to the public at any point in time before (although
most countries have varying degrees of exceptions
to this rule). To be inventive, the invention
cannot be obvious given everything that has ever
been disclosed to the public at any point in time
prior to the time of filing.
Many countries do not allow
the patenting of what they deem to be mental processes
that all are free to use or of inventions that
they deem would be generally undesirable to allow
patentees to exclude others from using, e.g. medical
processes.
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