Computer Security and Cryptography

19.1 WHAT IS A PATENT?

A patent is a grant of an exclusive property right; the full scope of the right to exclude per 35 U.S.C. §271 is the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing their invention into the United States.

The term of a patent now starts on the date the patent issues and continues to the date 20 years after the application date per 35 U.S.C. §154. The change from the seventeen year term was made in the 1990s to bring U.S. law into line with the patent laws of other countries.

The federal patent power stems from Article I, §8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which authorizes Congress

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Different types of patents are defined:

• Utility Patent: Granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or compositions of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.
• Design Patent: Granted to any person who has invented a new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.
• Plant Patent: Granted to any person who has invented or discovered and asexually reproduced any distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly found seedling, other than a tuber-propagated plant or a plant found in an uncultivated state.