German Patent lawyer
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A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a
set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their
assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public 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 meet the relevant patentability requirements such as novelty and
non-obviousness. The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries
is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or distributing
the patented invention without permission.
Under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, patents should be available in WTO
member states for any inventions, in all fields of technology, and the term
of protection available should be a minimum of twenty years.[3] In many
countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business
methods and computer programs. |
