The following is a very general overview of patenting.  Because it is only general, and not intended to apply to any specific situation, consult with me or another competent patent attorney before relying on this overview.

Generally, a patent is a written document that:

  • Is granted by a government;
  • Describes, to a person having ordinary skill in the corresponding field of endeavor (“the art”), in an enabling manner (and without requiring “undue” effort, e.g., an unreasonable degree of further research, experimentation, or training) how to make and/or use one or more “inventions”; and
  • Legally defines each “invention” via a “claim”.


Fundamentally, a patent applicant must sacrifice the secrecy of their innovative concept to receive limited patent rights, i.e., the rights to exclude others from exploiting that concept by making, importing, using, offering for sale, or selling products or processes that implement that concept in the country that issued the patent. But not every patent application results in a patent, meaning that sometimes the applicant forfeits the secrecy of their innovation and receives nothing in exchange. Due to that risk, filing a patent application is more like taking a bet that the secret is sufficiently innovative, and the patent application is written sufficiently well, that loss of secrecy will be well-rewarded.

Innovators see and seek patents as tools for protecting their substantial investments, such as in research, product development, manufacturing, marketing, and customer relations, by discouraging competitors from introducing products that implement the innovative concept, or at least forcing competitors to agree to a (typically paid) license to do so.

Most governments grant patents to encourage detailed and improvement-empowering written descriptions of innovative concepts to the public, thereby continually increasing the public’s knowledge base and the evolution of still more innovations. Although granted patent rights can provide a powerful incentive to researching and developing innovations, they are of limited duration, and typically expire within 20 years of the filing of an application for the patent.

Except as noted, this discussion will focus on U.S. patents.