How Patents Work

by Tom Harris
When inventors come up with a new device, the first thing they want to do is patent it. For a certain period of time, a patent will let an inventor control how their inventions are used. Patents are a palpable, legally-binding manifestation of a person's genius and innovation; granted by the government; they allow a person to actually own an idea.


illustration from Thomas Edison's 1879 patent on an electric light


An illustration from Thomas Edison's 1879 patent on an electric light, his first such device. Edison expanded on the ideas in this patent throughout his career, claiming hundreds of patents related to electric lighting.

Image courtesy United States Patent and Trademark Office

Patents and Intellectual Property
In most modern nations, there is a system for protecting intellectual property, the product of a person or company's originality and creativity.

Copyrights protect "original works of authorship" that are in a tangible form. This includes paintings, books, movies, choreographed dances (if the steps are written down), music, architecture and all other sorts of art. For a set length of time, these works cannot be copied or reproduced without the copyright-holder's permission. In the United States, the protection extends for the life of the copyright-holder plus 70 years (for works created after January 1, 1978). If a company owns the copyright, the protection lasts anywhere from 95 to 120 years depending on whether or not the work was published.

Patents are basically copyrights for inventions, defined by U.S. patent law as "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof." Unlike copyrights, patents protect the idea or design of the invention, rather than the tangible form of the invention itself. Consequently, patenting something is a much trickier procedure than copyrighting something.

3 things you need in order to get Patent Protection
Patents are the most complicated type of intellectual property, as well as the most restrictive. To patent an invention, you have to meet a number of requirements. First of all, the invention must be sufficiently novel. That is, it must be substantially unlike anything that is already patented, has already been on the market or has been written about in a publication. In fact, you can't even patent your own invention if it has been on the market or discussed in publications for more than a year.  Adaptations of earlier inventions can be patented as long as they are nonobvious, meaning that a person of standard skill in the area of study wouldn't automatically come up with the same idea upon examining the existing invention. Another condition for patenting something is that the invention is "useful." Generally speaking, this means that the invention serves some purpose and that it actually works.

illustration from U.S. patent # 5,375,430, a gravity-powered shoe air-conditioner
An illustration from U.S. patent # 5,375,430, a 'gravity-powered shoe air-conditioner.' Like many inventions, this device does not introduce any new concepts, but instead combines two existing concepts in an original way. The shoes, patented in 1994 by Israel Siegel, are powered by the walking motion of the user. Each time you take a step, your heel works to activate the air-conditioner compressor and expander.

Image courtesy United States Patent and Trademark Office


What you can't patent
All a patent really does is give the patent-holder the right to stop others from producing, selling or using his or her invention. For the life of the patent (20 years in the United States), It is up to the patent-holder to actually enforce the patent; the government does not go after patent or copyright infringers. While patent law does protect most forms of invention, it does not apply to all great ideas. You cannot patent something that belongs to nature (such as a new mineral or rare flower that you discover) because nature belongs to everyone. You cannot patent a law of science or the universe such as E=MC2. An abstract idea cannot be patented either. Your invention has to be something that can actually be created. Also, if an invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in the USA before the date that you apply, then the idea cannot be patented. And finally, literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works can be Copyright protected but not patented.


Who Has the Most Toys?
With 1,093 patents to his name, Thomas Edison (1847-1931) remains the most prolific inventor in U.S. history. He received his first patent, for an electrical voting machine, at the age of 21. In 1876, he set up an invention lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and set a schedule of one small invention every 10 days and one major invention every six months. Among many other inventions, Edison is the father of the light bulb, the phonograph and motion pictures with sound.

Patents help Society
Patents help encourage the advancement of science and technology. Patents do this in two major ways:

Illustration for U.S. patent # 3,150,641, a dust cover for a dog

Illustration for U.S. patent # 3,150,641, a dust cover for a dog. In addition to keeping dust off the dog, the 1964 invention is designed to keep flea-treatment products on the dog's skin while the chemicals are working. The patent explains that the dust cover could also be used to dry the dog after a bath. You blast a hair dryer into the provided port, and the hot air circulates all around the dog's body.

Image courtesy United States Patent and Trademark Office

The Patent Process
­Patents and copyrights are closely connected forms of intellectual-property protection, but the respective processes of acquiring them could hardly be more different. Any original work of art is automatically copyrighted as soon as it is put into some tangible form. To strengthen that protection, the creator may write a simple copyright notice, which includes the word "copyright" or the copyright symbol, the copyright-holder's name and the year of creation. To get a patent, however, you need to fill out a stack of forms, do extensive research and, in most cases, hire a lawyer.

 

motorized ice-cream cone patented in 1998 by Richard Hartman
Image courtesy United States Patent and Trademark Office
A motorized ice-cream cone, patented in 1998 by Richard Hartman. The patent (# 5,971,829) describes the device as 'A novelty amusement eating receptacle for supporting, rotating and sculpting a portion of ice cream or similarly malleable food while it is being consumed.' Even this relatively simple novelty item has a fairly extensive patent. It includes seven claims and six drawings, and it cites 15 earlier patents.

A hypthetical Example:

Let's say you're a brilliant inventor, and you come up with an ingenious teleporter, a device that can move people across the room by scanning them, replicating them exactly at another point and destroying the original. To make things simple, let's assume that you only want to patent your idea in the United States. Once your prototype is finished, and you've successfully beamed your cat and a few incredulous family members across the room, the first thing you need to do is search the United States Patent and Trademark Office's patent database to see what similar ideas have been patented. You can do this at the Patent Search Room in Arlington, Virginia, or online at the U.S. Patent Office site.
­When you search the database, you come up with two related machines: a machine that can tele­port single quantum particles and a highly-sensitive medical scanner that analyzes the 1028 atoms that make up the human body and stores the information in a large database. Your machine uses a similar scanner to catalog the tiny particles that make up a person, and replicates these particles in the same sort of way as the quantum teleporter. But you have added the crucial element that makes human teleportation possible: a sophisticated computer system that can arrange the replicated quantum particles in exactly the same configuration as the original.
At this point, you know that your invention is new, but you don't know what the scope of your patent should be. You haven't invented teleportation, per se, but you have made it practicable on a grand scale. Most inventors would then hire a patent lawyer or patent agent to help. Here are the steps as given by the US Patent Office..

from http://www.howstuffworks.com/patent.htm