The child has just started walking…

On Monday, the 1st day of October during those chilly winters of 2007 , this blog — pyarepatent.wordpress.com was born. The blog has a long way to go before it would be significantly contributing to your knowledge , before you become hooked to it like your bed tea or daily newspaper.

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For all the toddlers of ‘ Intellectual property right ‘ industry following may be of some help:

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a patentee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.

The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must be new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent or exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the invention.

Why get a patent ?

A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention. Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, usually 20 years from the filing date. A patent is, in effect, a limited property right that the government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

The rights conveyed by a patent vary country-by-country. For example, in the United States, a patent covers research, except “purely philosophical” inquiry. A U.S. patent is infringed by any “making” of the invention, even a making that goes toward development of a new invention — which may itself become subject of a patent. In contrast, Australian law permits others to build on top of a patented invention, by carving out exceptions from infringement for those who conduct research (e.g. for academic purposes) on the invention.

A patent being an exclusionary right does not, however, necessarily give the owner of the patent the right to exploit the patent. For example, many inventions are improvements of prior inventions which may still be covered by someone else’s patent. If an inventor takes an existing patented mouse trap design, adds a new feature to make an improved mouse trap, and obtains a patent on the improvement, he or she can only legally build his or her improved mouse trap with permission from the patent holder of the original mouse trap, assuming the original patent is still in force. On the other hand, the owner of the improved mouse trap can exclude the original patent owner from using the improvement.

Some countries have “working provisions” which require that the invention be exploited in the jurisdiction it covers. Consequences of not working an invention vary from one country to another, ranging from revocation of the patent rights to the awarding of a compulsory license awarded by the courts to a party wishing to exploit a patented invention. The patentee has the opportunity to challenge the revocation or license, but is usually required to provide evidence that the reasonable requirements of the public have been met by the working of invention.

Application and prosecution

A patent is obtained by filing a written application at the relevant patent office. The application contains a description of how to make and use the invention and, under some legislations, if not self evident, the usefulness of the invention. The patent application may or must also comprise “claims”. Claims define the invention and embodiments for which that the applicant wants patent rights to.In more details, to obtain a patent, an applicant must provide a written description of his or her invention in sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art (i.e., the relevant area of technology) to make and use the invention. This written description is provided in what is known as the patent specification, which often is accompanied by illustrating drawings. Some countries, such as the United States, further require that the specification disclose the “best mode” of the invention (i.e., the most effective way, to the best of the inventor’s knowledge, to make or practice the invention).In addition, at the end of the specification, the applicant must provide one or more claims that define what the applicant regards as his or her invention. A claim, unlike the body of the specification, is a description designed to provide the public with notice of precisely what the patent owner has a right to exclude others from making, using, or selling. Claims are often analogized to a deed or other instrument that, in the context of real property, sets the metes and bounds of an owner’s right to exclude. The claims define what a patent covers. A single patent may contain numerous claims, each of which is regarded as a distinct invention.

For a patent to be granted, that is to take legal effect, the patent application must meet the legal requirements related to patentability.

Once a patent application has been filed, most patent offices examine that application for compliance with the requirements of the relevant patent law. If the application does not comply with all of the requirements, the objections are usually communicated to the applicant or his or her patent agent or attorney, who can then respond to those objections to attempt to overcome them and obtain the grant of a patent.

In most countries, there is no requirement that the inventor build a prototype or otherwise reduce his or her invention to actual practice in order to obtain a patent. The description of the invention, however, must be sufficiently complete so that another person with ordinary skill in the art of the invention can make and use the invention without undue experimentation.

Once granted the patent is subject in most countries to renewal fees, generally due each year,to keep the patent in force.