Patents
Inventions & Patents
An invention is a novel and useful idea resulting from study and experiment, and may relate to a process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter, or any improvement thereof. An invention may be made by a sole inventor or by more than one inventor. In the legal sense, the inventor must be involved in the conception of the invention.
A patent secures to its owner, who is not necessarily the inventor, the right to take legal action to prevent others from making, using, and selling the invention for a limited period. A patent is granted for a term of twenty years from the date on which it is filed. This term can be extended for some pharmaceutical products or processes that are subject to federal regulatory delays.
Conception & Reduction to Practice
The term conception describes the intellectual act of creating a complete inventive concept, and includes methods for making and using the invention. The term reduction to practice is defined either as (a) constructive reduction to practice, which means completing a written, formal description of an invention in a patent application, even though physical embodiment of the invention may not have been realized; or (b) actual reduction to practice, which means making a physical embodiment of an invention and using it successfully for its intended purpose.
Patentable Inventions
United States patent law states that patents may be granted on a new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter, or any improvement on these. (A patent may also be granted on a distinct and new variety of plant that is asexually reproduced and any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.) In addition, patent law also requires an invention to meet the following three criteria:
- New or Novel: The invention must be demonstrably different from any existing prior art. This means it cannot be described in prior public disclosures, which include publications and/or availability of the invention to the public, as in a commercial product.
- Useful: The invention must be useful in ways that represent improvements over existing products and/or techniques.
- Non-obvious: The invention cannot be obvious to a person of "ordinary skill" in the art. Non-obviousness usually is demonstrated by showing that practicing the invention yields surprising, unexpected results.
Each of the previous criteria is open to the judgment and interpretation of the patent examiner, so it is on these several criteria that much of the negotiation between the U.S. Patent Office and the applicant centers. Patent law also requires that inventions be reduced to practice in order to be patentable, but some extrapolation about an inventive concept can be included in a patent application. For example, an invention that claims a broad class of chemical compounds is rarely granted a patent, unless evidence is presented that several different representative members of the class have actually been made. A claim, even to a single new compound or plasmid vector, usually must include a detailed description of its actual synthesis or construction, in order to receive patent protection. Patent protection of novel genes requires the complete sequence and its biological utility.