Historically, kings granted land patents that gave the patent holder the exclusive right to exploit part of the king's land and to exclude others from the land. Land patents were an effective land management tool.
Today, patents are an effective technology management tool. By granting to inventors exclusionary rights in their inventions -- and so the exclusive right to exploit for a time the fruits of their work -- governments encourage the advancement of technology and the improvement of society.

• A patent is a covenant between a government, representing the public interest, and the inventor of a novel and useful technology (the "invention") by which, in return for publicly disclosing the details of the invention, the inventor is granted exclusive property rights in the invention and its use for a specified period of time.
  
  
• In the United States, a patentable technology can be a mechanical or electronic device or apparatus; or a living "manufacture," such as an animal, plant, virus, or bacteria not produced by natural means; or a new composition of matter, such as a chemical compound, or a molecule, or chain of molecules comprising a gene; or a process or the product of a process, including a process defined in computer software; or, in certain instances, a design. A fundamental requirement of any patentable invention, however, is that it be both useful and novel.
  
  
• A patent grants to the patent holder the right to exclude all others from manufacturing, selling, or using ("practicing") the patented product or process for the duration of the patent's term. For U.S. patent applications filed after June 8, 1995, the term of a patent is 20 years from the filing date of the application. (This is true of most other countries as well.)
  
  
• U.S. patent rights are secured if, and only if, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issues a patent. In general, international patent rights may only be secured by applying for patent protection in each country, separately. However, international agreements, such as the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and consolidated patent offices, such as the European Patent Office, aim to streamline the acquisition of patent rights throughout the world.

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• U.S. patents are issued in the name of the individual or individuals who invented the new technology.^[1] Inventors may sell or otherwise assign (often under the terms of the inventors' employment, for instance) some or all of their rights in a particular invention to another individual, a business entity, or even a government, and such an assignee may take an active role in the patent application process; nevertheless credit for inventions is always attributable to inventors as individuals. Corporations cannot be inventors.
  
  
• In general, an invention is patentable only if it is not already "in the public domain." In the United States and Canada, once an invention has been publicly used or disclosed, the inventor has one year in which to file a patent application for that invention. For other countries, any public disclosure may render it unpatentable.
  
  
• Traditionally in the United States, the contents of a patent application have been confidential and would remain so until a patent issued, unless the inventor chose to disclose the invention. The practice in other countries is to publish the patent application 18 months after it is filed, making a public disclosure of the invention. Recent changes in U.S. law brought U.S. practice more in line with the rest of the world, mandating that U.S. patent applications filed after November 29, 2000, will be published 18 months after filing, unless the inventor declares no intention to seek patent protection outside the U.S..
  
  
• A patent application contains a narrative description of the invention and itemizes the details of the invention claimed by the applicant to be novel and protectable by patent (the "claims"). In addition, the application must contain the name(s) of the inventor(s) and the title of the invention. A patent application also usually contains a drawing or drawings, and it must contain any further information necessary to describe the invention. While there are variations from country to country in particular requirements and conventions (for instance, it is usually a requirement that the application be written in the language of the country in which patent protection is sought), the form of the patent application is essentially the same for all countries.
  
  
• Once filed, the claims made in the patent application are examined for novelty and usefulness in light of the history of invention within the particular technology or technologies embodied in, or related to, the claimed invention. The Patent Classification System helps to identify the historical and technological characteristics that a particular invention possesses, and so helps to locate all of the previously disclosed inventions similar to the claimed invention. Patent examiners typically have some skill in each area of technology for which they examine patent applications. In the United States, a technical degree (usually at least a Bachelor of Science) is required both for patent examiners and for the patent agents and patent attorneys who are admitted to practice before the U.S. PTO.
  
  
• The patent application process, in essence, is a negotiation between the patent examiner and the inventor that usually lasts for months, and sometimes can last for years. The examiner seeks to exclude those claims that he or she considers to describe devices, processes, compositions of matter, etc., that have been disclosed in, or are obvious from, previous patents, or that became otherwise publicly known, prior to the filing of the application. This "prior art" may be a single reference describing the applicant's invention exactly, or it may comprise several references taken together. The inventor, on the other hand, attempts to justify the creativity, inventiveness, novelty and usefulness of each and every facet of the invention claimed.

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• Once a U.S. patent application has been filed with the PTO, and as long as it remains active there, the claimed invention will have "Patent Pending" or "Patent Applied For" status. These terms, affixed to or associated with a publicly shown or traded product or process, puts others on notice that the inventor has claimed, and may acquire, patent protection for the product or process or for some part of it.
  
  
• Patent Pending status by itself does not provide any legal protection for the claimed invention, and the law provides for sanctions for false or improper use of the Patent Pending label and its equivalents. However, publication of the patent application -- automatically after 18 months, or at the inventor's request -- does afford limited enforceable protection from infringement of the invention before the patent issues.
  
  
• The matter of patent application filing dates and their effect on the priority of patent claims is confusing, but it is critical to the acquisition of patent rights. The matter is made confusing, in some respects, by another way in which U.S. patent law differs from the patent laws of other countries. Other than in the United States, patent protection generally accrues to the first inventor to claim the invention by filing the patent application in a particular country. U.S. patent law, however, provides that rights in an invention belong to the first to practice the invention, regardless of who may file an application first. (Nevertheless, the first inventor may still forfeit his or her rights for failure to use diligence in reducing the invention to practice.)
  
  
• Generally, an inventor in the United States has one year after the initial filing date of a U.S. patent application to file for patent protection in all other countries. The U.S. filing date is important if the invention is publicly disclosed by the inventor after filing, because filing for patent protection in countries other than the U.S. is usually precluded by public use or disclosure. However, as long as a U.S. patent application has been filed before disclosure of an invention, the inventor may still file patent applications in other countries, using the U.S. filing date, for up to one year after the U.S. application's filing.
  
  
• In all other cases, as long as an invention has not been publicly disclosed, and the patent application has not been published, and the patent has not issued, an inventor may file for patent protection in any country, and, in general, the priority of the inventor's claims is then usually determined in each country by the filing date in each country.

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• All that is required to file a patent application is a description of the invention detailing those items which are novel and useful. Except for a few special cases, a prototype or working model of the invention is not required by the U.S. PTO. Formal drawings will be required at some point in the application process, but they are not usually necessary in order to file an application and, thereby, to establish a filing date.
  
  
• Just as any individual may act as his or her own counsel (pro se) before a court of law in the U.S., so may any inventor file an application for patent protection for his or her own invention. Just as it may be less than wise to be your own attorney, however, it is probably also a better idea to have someone else champion your patent application. This is probably more advisable in connection with the prosecution or defense of patents than in most other areas of law practice, because patent law places great importance on the correct use of language and use of exactly the correct language. The nature of a protected claim can turn on the precise meaning of a word or the wording of a phrase.

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• Arguably the most important preparatory step to filing a patent application is a "patent search." Ideally, such a search should seek out all relevant publications, because a patent examiner can cite any public document against any claim of invention. Since a pervasive search can be extremely expensive to conduct, however, the more commonly conducted patent search is primarily a review of all issued patents and published patent applications in order to determine what prior art exists that may be similar to the allegedly new invention. Such a search, of course, may still turn up references to other, non-patent public records.
  
  
• Knowledge of prior art gained by a patent search, or by skill and experience in the field of the invention, helps to better define the novel aspects of the claimed invention as it is applied for. Such knowledge may also serve to save the inventor time and money pursuing previously claimed or otherwise unpatentable matter.
  
  
• Also, the inventor has a duty to disclose, concurrent with filing a patent application, all that he or she knows about prior art in the field of the invention.

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• Once granted, and for the duration of the term of the patent, only the inventor or assignee (i.e., the patent holder) may determine whether and by whom the patented invention may be practiced. It is not a requirement of U.S. law that a new technology be used, only that it be useful.
  
  
• On the other hand, in order to maintain patent rights throughout the full term of the patent, the patent holder has certain obligations that must be met. In the U.S., documents must be filed and maintenance fees must be paid prior to the fourth, eighth, and twelfth anniversaries of the patent issuance date.
  
  
• Furthermore, the patent holder has an obligation to protect and defend the rights granted under patent law. Just as permitting the public to freely cross one's property may lead to the permanent establishment of a public right of way and the diminishment of one's property rights, so the knowing failure to enforce one's patent rights (one legal term for this is laches) against infringement by others may result in the forfeiture of some or all of the rights granted in a particular patent.
  
  
• U.S. patent rights, which are limited to the right to stop others from making, using, or selling the invention in the U.S. and its territories and possessions, are enforced through actions in the U.S. Federal Courts. In general, infringement of patent rights granted by a particular country must be prosecuted in the court system of that country.

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