Criteria for a Patent
The purpose of a patent is to protect your intellectual property rights. Even if you believe your creation is one of a kind, your creation must meet several governmental requirements to ensure your invention is worthy of a patent.
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Research
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Before you do anything else, research patents that already exist to make sure someone else hasn't already come up with your idea. If your invention too closely resembles what someone else came up with, your patent can't happen.
Statutory
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You invention much meet the statute regulations set forth in the U.S. Patent Act, specifically Section 101. Generally, statutory requirements include most every machine, manufactured articles, process and/or composition of matter.
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Novelty
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An invention must be new, as defined by the U.S. Patent Act, in order to be patentable. As a general rule, an invention is not a novelty if it the public knew of it before the inventor sought a patent, someone described the invention in published media more than a year before filing the patent or someone sold or used the invention publicly more than a year before.
Useful
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An invention must, quite simply, be useful in order to receive a patent. Part of this requirement includes that the invention much have some sort of machinery that makes the usefulness possible.
Nonobvious
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If your invention is an improvement upon a previously patented invention, it must be a non-obvious improvement. This means that the new process must not be obvious to "one of ordinary skill in the art," according to the U.S. Patent Act.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Dmitry Dzhus
