Intellectual Property Primer Series: Patent Basics

Intellectual property laws can be confusing and overwhelming. To help you navigate this web of complexity, we offer an IP primer series to share the foundations of intellectual property laws, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.

A patent does not give the owner the right to do anything. Rather, it gives the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, and/or importing the claimed invention, which most commonly can be a device, method, chemical composition, or ornamental design.

Requirements of Patentability

U.S. patents protect any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter or any new and useful improvement thereof. An "invention" is not patentable if it claims a law of nature, a physical phenomenon, or an abstract idea.