- The purpose of a patent is to protect an inventor and give him an economic advantage in capitalizing on his work. Obtaining a patent is also a means of establishing recognition of an invention and the primacy of the inventor, protecting him from unlawful imitation or competition. In fact, the main objective of a patent is to empower an inventor to prevent others from utilizing the invention without authorization.
- Three types of patents are issued by the U.S. Patent office. The first, called utility patents, are granted to inventors or those who improve upon a process, machine or composition of matter. Design patents protect those who devise novel ornamental designs or articles of manufacture. Anyone who invents or discovers a distinctly new plant variety is eligible to receive the third type of patent, called a plant patent.
- The statute that creates patents provides "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the object of the patent within the United States. The U.S. patent office does not enforce patents, but rather leaves it to inventors to pursue legal remedies against unlawful use of their invention in federal courts. Patents are only enforceable within the U.S., though a rapidly evolving sphere of intellectual property law is working to protect inventors in the global marketplace.
- The term of a patent is 20 years, after which the inventor loses the ability to stop others from reproducing, using, marketing or selling her invention. In some cases an extension may be obtained, though this is relatively rare. The time limitation on patents is of major significance to the pharmaceutical industry, which effectively maintains a monopoly on proprietary drugs until the expiration of a patent, at which time cheaper generic versions tend to flood the marketplace.
- Federal patent law explicitly states that the subject matter of a patent must be "useful." This language has been used by courts to limit the extent of patentable material, notably excluding inventions useful solely for producing material or technology used in atomic weapons. Patents are also limited to specific machines or physical matter, meaning ideas and abstractions cannot be patented. This effectively excludes patents for the discovery of laws of nature or of physical phenomena.
