What is Patent?

A patent is a form of intellectual property that provides its owner the legal right to eliminate others from making, using, selling and importing an invention for a limited period of years (usually 20 years), in exchange for publishing an enabling public disclosure of the invention. It offers exclusive rights for an invention, product, or process that provides a new way of doing things. Sometimes it offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application (USPTO, 2018).

There are three types of Patents:

1. Utility patent: It is a patent which cover anyone who invents a new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture or a composition of matter.


2. Design patent: It includes an original and ornamental design for a manufactured product.


3. Plant patent: It is a patent related to a kind of plant which is capable of reproduction.

The Patent Application has four main parts:

1. Specification: it is the detailed description of an invention.


2. Abstract: It is the concise summary of an invention.


3. Drawings: These are images which show how the invention works.


4. Claims: It is the part of the application which defines the scope of the invention.

For an invention to be Patentable, it must satisfy three key criteria:

1. New: The invention should not be publicly known in any way, anywhere in the world.


2. Industrial Application: The invention must be useful and have some form of practical application. It should be capable of being made and used in an industry.


3. Inventive step: The invention must be an improvement over any existing product or process that is already available.