ABA Family Legal Guide

Forming and Operating a Small Business

Intellectual Property

Patents

What is a patent?

A patent gives you an exclusive and potentially valuable right, within the United States, to make, use, and sell your invention for a period of years. Not every invention is patentable--there are all kinds of tests that an invention must pass in order to be patented. For example, the invention must not be obvious, must have some utility, must not be frivolous or immoral, and must be more than just an idea or a scientific principle.

If your application for a patent is successful, you become the grantee of the patent. That gives you the nonrenewable exclusive monopoly in the United States to use or assign rights to use a utility patent for twenty years from the date the patent application is filed. Maintenance fees are required about every four years to keep a patent in force. These fees can be as high as $3,000.

All this effort is worthwhile because you can then prevent anyone from selling or using your invention without your permission. However, there are no patent police to do this for you--you must file (and finance) a lawsuit against the infringers, and that might take years of litigation and a great deal of money.