A patent is a grant issued in the name of the United States under the seal of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), and is signed by, or in the name of the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. A patent “confers the right to an applicant to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention in the United States” and its territories for 20 years from the application filing date. (If a patent was applied for prior to June 8, 1995, the term of these exclusive rights extends 17 years from the application filing date.) The goal behind granting exclusionary rights to an inventor is to protect the time and money that an individual or company may put into the development of an invention. This guaranties that only the applicant of a patent has the opportunity to produce and market an invention for the term of the patent, and is seen as essential to encouraging investment in and development of new products.

The exact nature of the rights conferred by a patent is a point of confusion for many individuals. The key to these rights is in the words "right to exclude" in the phrase quoted above. A patent does not grant the rights to make, use, sell or import an invention. A patent only grants the right to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the invention. Since the patent does not grant the right to make, use, sell, or import an invention, the patentee’s own right to do so is dependent upon tow things. The rights of others (does someone else hold a patent with prior rights over the new product?) and whatever general laws might be applicable (is the product or its use legal and safe?). A patentee, merely because he/she has received a patent for an invention, is not thereby authorized to make, use, offer for sale, or sell, or import the invention if doing so would violate any law. An interesting example of how this might occur can be seen in Dr. Anand Chakrabarty’s invention of a petroleum-waste eating bacterium.

One other important and frequently confusing issue related to the issuing of patents involves the nature of patentable material. For more information on this topic, click the link below.