A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention. In most countries, patent rights fall under private law and the patent holder must sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce their rights. In some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; in others they are irrelevant.
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an idea is unique enough either as a stand alone invention or as a significant improvement over the work of others, it can be patented. A patent, if granted, gives the inventor a proprietary interest in the patent over a specific period of time, which can be licensed for financial gain.
A corset is a support garment commonly worn to hold and train the torso into a desired shape, traditionally a smaller waist or larger bottom, for aesthetic or medical purposes, or support the breasts. Both men and women are known to wear corsets, though this item was for many years an integral part of women's wardrobes.
Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may vary by jurisdiction, but it typically includes using or selling the patented invention. In many countries, a use is required to be commercial to constitute patent infringement.
Within the context of a national or multilateral body of law, an invention is patentable if it meets the relevant legal conditions to be granted a patent. By extension, patentability also refers to the substantive conditions that must be met for a patent to be held valid.
The Bayh–Dole Act or Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act is United States legislation permitting ownership by contractors of inventions arising from federal government-funded research. Sponsored by two senators, Birch Bayh of Indiana and Bob Dole of Kansas, the Act was adopted in 1980, is codified at 94 Stat. 3015, and in 35 U.S.C. § 200–212, and is implemented by 37 C.F.R. 401 for federal funding agreements with contractors and 37 C.F.R 404 for licensing of inventions owned by the federal government.
Sufficiency of disclosure or enablement is a patent law requirement that a patent application disclose a claimed invention in sufficient detail so that the person skilled in the art could carry out that claimed invention. The requirement is fundamental to patent law: a monopoly is granted for a given period of time in exchange for a disclosure to the public how to make or practice the invention.
The history of patents and patent law is generally considered to have started with the Venetian Statute of 1474.
In patent law, an inventor is the person, or persons in United States patent law, who contribute to the claims of a patentable invention. In some patent law frameworks, however, such as in the European Patent Convention (EPC) and its case law, no explicit, accurate definition of who exactly is an inventor is provided. The definition may slightly vary from one European country to another. Inventorship is generally not considered to be a patentability criterion under European patent law.
This is a list of legal terms relating to patents. A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention, but a territorial right to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention, granted to an inventor or his successor in rights in exchange to a public disclosure of the invention.
City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co., 97 U.S. 126 (1878), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that while the public use of an invention more than one year prior to the inventor's application for a patent normally causes the inventor to lose his right to a patent, there is an exception to this rule for public uses for experimental purposes.
Title 35 of the United States Code is a title of United States Code regarding patent law. The sections of Title 35 govern all aspects of patent law in the United States. There are currently 37 chapters, which include 376 sections, in Title 35.
The history of United States patent law started even before the U.S. Constitution was adopted, with some state-specific patent laws. The history spans over more than three centuries.
Stanford University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., 563 U.S. 776 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that title in a patented invention vests first in the inventor, even if the inventor is a researcher at a federally funded lab subject to the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act. The judges affirmed the common understanding of U.S. constitutional law that inventors originally own inventions they make, and contractual obligations to assign those rights to third parties are secondary.
Evans v. Jordan, 13 U.S. 199 (1815), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that someone who had copied a patented invention after the patent had expired, and before the patent was restored by a private bill, would be liable for damages for patent infringement for any use continuing after the patent was restored. It was the second published Supreme Court decision on patent law, and the first of four Supreme Court cases dealing with the Oliver Evans flour mill patent. Like other Supreme Court patent cases prior to Evans v. Eaton, however, this case did not deal with substantive patent law, but only with issues of statutory construction and infringement liability.
Evans v. Eaton, 16 U.S. 454 (1818), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a patent disclosing an improved method of manufacture by means of several different improved machines should be construed to claim both the method and the improvements to the machines, but not to include the machines apart from the inventor's improvements.
Evans v. Eaton, 20 U.S. 356 (1822), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, chiefly, that a patent on an improved machine must clearly describe how the machine differs from the prior art.
Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Universal Film Mfg. Co., 243 U.S. 502 (1917), is United States Supreme Court decision that is notable as an early example of the patent misuse doctrine. It held that, because a patent grant is limited to the invention described in the claims of the patent, the patent law does not empower the patent owner, by notices attached to the patented article, to extend the scope of the patent monopoly by restricting the use of the patented article to materials necessary for their operation but forming no part of the patented invention, or to place downstream restrictions on the articles making them subject to conditions as to use. The decision overruled The Button-Fastener Case, and Henry v. A.B. Dick Co., which had held such restrictive notices effective and enforceable.
Pennock v. Dialogue, 27 U.S. 1 (1829), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held invalid a patent on a method of making hose, because the inventor had commercially exploited the invention for years before filing the patent application. The case has been cited many times for the proposition that the U.S. patent system was not established for the purpose of enriching inventors or their financiers but rather for the purpose of furthering the public interest by stimulating technological progress.
Florence Wilhelmina Parpart Layman, most commonly known by her maiden name of Florence Parpart, was an American inventor known primarily for her patents for an industrial sweeping machine and electrical refrigerator.
