Inventions and Patents

Related Terms: Copyright; Intellectual Property; Licensing

A patent is a document that secures to an inventor the exclusive right to sell, make, or otherwise use his or her invention for a specified number of years. The document details the terms under which the government has granted the inventor full possession of the invention. These terms of possession or "intellectual property right" include specifications designed to exclude all others from making, using, or selling the invention in the United States for the life of the patent. The patent also provides rightful patent holders with specific legal steps that can be taken to stop (or be compensated for) instances in which others have infringed on the patent.

Patented inventions have spawned thousands of small businesses over the years. Not all of these businesses have succeeded, of course; some were predicated on new products or designs that were fundamentally flawed, while others faded because of operational problems, economic trends, or personal frailties. But countless successful entrepreneurs have launched their businesses on the strength of a single invention, and patents continue to stand as among the most valuable assets of thousands of small business owners across the nation.

TYPES OF PATENTS

Inventors may apply for patents on inventions in three major categories: utility patents, design patents, and plant patents.

Utility Patents

Utility Patents are the most common kind of patents. They are granted to inventors who, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), invent or discover any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or compositions of matter (mixtures of ingredients, chemical compounds), or any new and useful variations of existing products, processes, or compositions. The legal definition of "process" in this instance includes new industrial or technical methods. Utility patents are the most complex of the three kinds of patents, for they require the patent applicant to provide a full description of the invention's functional and/or structural features (often including detailed drawings) as well as the inventor's explanation of what he or she feels is "patentable." Inventors filing utility patents subsequently are more likely to secure legal help in making certain that all details of the patent are adequately addressed. In recent years, the greatest increase in this kind of patent application has been seen in Internet-related business methodologies and innovations. In 2005, 381,797 Utility Patent applications were filed with the PTO and 151,079 were issued.

Design Patents

Inventors can also obtain patents on the appearance of a product, provided that it is a new and original design. As Richard C. Levy noted in his Inventor's Desktop Companion, "if you've invented any new, original, and ornamental designs for an article of manufacture, a design patent may be appropriate. A design patent protects only the appearance of an article and not its structure or utilitarian features." Thomas Field, author of the Small Business Administration's Avoiding Patent, Trademark and Copyright Problems, pointed out that both design patents and utility patents "do more than prevent copying; they forbid the making, using or selling of an invention similar to or the same as the protected invention," even in situations where the second invention was independently created. In 2005, 25,304 Design Patent applications were filed with the PTO and 13,395 were issued.

Plant Patents

This kind of patent is granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly found seedlings. The PTO does not grant plant patents, however, for tuber-propagated plants or plants found in an uncultivated state. Asexually propagated plants, noted Levy, are those that are reproduced by means other than from seeds, such as rooting of cuttings, layering, budding, grafting, and inarching. Plant patents comprise only a small minority of the total number of patents that have been bestowed by the PTO. In 2005, 1,288 Plant Patent applications were filed with the PTO and 816 were issued.

Although millions of patents have been granted in the United States and other countries over the years, there are many things that are not eligible to receive patent protection. These include general business ideas and strategies, printed material, scientific theories, mathematical formulas, and obvious changes to existing items, although some of the above can be legally protected in other ways. Printed material, for instance, can be protected through copyrights.

FILING A PATENT

Patents are arranged according to a massive classification system encompassing more than 400 subject classes and 115,000 subject subclasses. The Index to the U.S. Patent Classification System, an alphabetical subject listing of these various classes and subclasses, is produced by the PTO to aid searchers of the system. "The Classifications," wrote Levy, "are to searching a patent what the card catalog is to looking for a library book. It is the only way to discover what exists in the field of prior art [prior patents]. The Classifications are a star to steer by, without which no meaningful patent search can be completed." The Index, coupled with the Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Manual of Classification, are among the most important tools available to patent searchers.

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