What is a Patent?

As defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO): A [US] patent for an invention is the grant of a property appropriate to the inventor, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. A patent refers to a suitable granted to anybody who invents or discovers any new and helpful method, machine, write-up of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and helpful improvement thereof.

Furthermore, a patent is a property suitable that provides the patent holder the proper, for a restricted time, to exclude other people from producing, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing into the United States the claimed invention in exchange for a full disclosure of the invention. In simplified terms, a patent is a way of protecting an invention (any new and beneficial method, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and valuable improvement thereof).

As a result, without having a patent, any individual can legally make, use, sell or import your invention.

Note: Ideas are not patentable, but rather the information of how to make and/or use the thought is patentable.

To be patentable the law specifies three primary patentability specifications wherein the topic matter of the invention must be:
• Helpful - To have utility as in an invention need to be capable of some useful use.
• Novel - The invention must be new (various from the prior art) and an invention is not new if it has been described in a printed publication, identified or employed by other people, or has been in public use or for sale. If an invention is not new, then the invention is not patentable (i.e., anticipated by the prior art).
• Non-obvious If the differences in between the invention sought to be patented and the prior art (what is recognized) would have been apparent to a person having ordinary skill in the art then the invention is obvious and not patentable.

Example: Obvious non-patentable subject matter consists of the substitution of 1 color for one more, or alterations in size or obvious changes or improvements over the prior art.