The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) offer three types of patents:

 

1) Utility Patent: By far, the most common type of patent. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.

 

2) Design Patent: Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.  In general, a Design patent protects only the appearance of an invention (how it looks).

 

3) Plant Patent: Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.  This type of patent protection is rare.

 

In brief, the main components of a Non-Provisional patent application comprises of an abstract, a specification, at least one drawing illustrating the claimed invention, and at least one claim. A declaration or oath must also be submitted with the application, along with a filing fee.

 

Utility Patents

 

A utility patent is granted by the Government to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. The term of a utility patent lasts for 20 years from the earliest effective filing date.

 

The purpose of the abstract is to enable the USPTO and the public to determine quickly the nature of the technical disclosures of your invention. The abstract points out what is new in the art to which your invention pertains. It should be in narrative form and generally limited to a single paragraph, and it must begin on a separate page. An abstract should not be longer than 150 words.

 

The specification is a written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making and using the same. The specification must be in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which the invention pertains to make and use the same.

 

The claims must particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which you regard as the invention. The claims define the scope of the protection of the patent. Whether a patent will be granted is determined, in large measure, by the choice of wording of the claims.

 

Design Patents

 

A design consists of the visual ornamental characteristics embodied in, or applied to, an article of manufacture. Since a design is manifested in appearance, the subject matter of a design patent application may relate to the configuration or shape of an article, to the surface ornamentation applied to an article, or to the combination of configuration and surface ornamentation. A design for surface ornamentation is inseparable from the article to which it is applied and cannot exist alone. It must be a definite pattern of surface ornamentation, applied to an article of manufacture.

 

Plant Patents

 

A plant patent is granted by the Government to an inventor (or the inventor's heirs or assigns) who has invented or discovered and asexually reproduced a distinct and new variety of plant, other than a tuber propagated plant or a plant found in an uncultivated state. The grant, which lasts for 20 years from the date of filing the application, protects the inventor's right to exclude others from asexually reproducing, selling, or using the plant so reproduced. This protection is limited to a plant in its ordinary meaning:

 

* A living plant organism which expresses a set of characteristics determined by its single, genetic makeup or genotype, which can be duplicated through asexual reproduction, but which can not otherwise be "made" or "manufactured."

* Sports, mutants, hybrids, and transformed plants are comprehended; sports or mutants may be spontaneous or induced. Hybrids may be natural, from a planned breeding program, or somatic in source. While natural plant mutants might have naturally occurred, they must have been discovered in a cultivated area.

* Algae and macro fungi are regarded as plants, but bacteria are not.

 

The information presented in this publication is tailored to apply to and is limited to patents on asexually reproduced plants. While the USPTO does accept utility applications having claims to plants, seed, genes, etc., such practice is beyond the scope of this publication. Intellectual property protection for true breeding seed reproduced plant varieties is offered through the Plant Variety Protection Office, Beltsville, Md., which should be contacted for information regarding intellectual property protection for such crops.

U.S. Non-Provisional Patent Applications

Helping inventors navigate through the patent process.

© 2006 International Patent Group, LLC

 

This website provides general information only, not legal advice. You should not act upon this information without independent legal counsel. The information on this website is not guaranteed to be current, complete or accurate.