Patents

A patent is “a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor ‘to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States’ for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.” – USPTO Glossary

To get to the core of what patents are and why they’re important, just remember that a patent is a set of instructions on how to make and use an invention.  The reason why patents exist is to motivate inventors to disclose their inventions.  The government is rewarding you, the inventor, for making the information about your invention public and contributing to the innovation of the country.  You get the property right for now, and when your patent expires, it will pass into the public domain so that anybody can use it.

In this section, we give you information about the formal patent process.  We have split into the following sections:

• Provisional Patent Applications
• Utility Patent Applications
• Patent Prosecution
• Patent Allowance
• Patent Cooperation Treaty

Please note, even if you choose to have a registered practitioner represent you before the patent office, you are still the applicant. As such, we always discuss patent applications in terms of what you are doing, even if your practitioner might be the one doing it.