What types of patents are there?
There are actually three different kinds of patents according to the
US patent and trademark office. The three types of patents are Utility
patents, Design patents, and Plant patents.
Utility Patents
Utility patents are the patents most people think of when patents are
brought up. Utility patents are an intellectual property right granted
by the United States Government of the to inventors “to exclude others
from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention
throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United
States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the
invention when the patent is granted.
This right was established over 200 years ago in Article 1, Section 8 of
the United States Constitution: “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.”
Utility patents may be granted to any inventor who invents any new and
useful process, article of manufacture, machine, or composition of
matter, or any new and useful improvement. Examples of utility patents
include electronic circuitry, automatic transmissions, methods of
manufacturing things, chemical processes, vacuum cleaners, and darned
near anything else that can be manufactured by a human being.
To obtain a utility patent there are four legal requirements; it must
fit within one of the statutory classes, it must be useful, it must be
novel, and it must be unobvious.
Design Patents
A design patent covers the unique specific look, shape, ornamental
design, and that kind of thing. A design patent does not cover
functional items. It must be purely aesthetic and if not must go in the
direction of a utility patent.
Design patent applications consist mostly of drawings since there are no
functional features to explain, just a design.
Design patents only have a single claim and are not difficult to get
around by making simple changes. While a utility patent protects the way
something works and is used, a design patent only protects the look of
an article. An invention can have both functional and ornamental
characteristics and thus get both a design and a utility patent in some
cases.
The design must be original and not just duplicate of a well-known or
naturally occurring person or thing. You will not be issued a design
patent for subject matter that can be considered offensive to any ethnic
group, nationality, religion, race or sex.
Plant Patents
A plant patent is granted to an inventor who has invented or discovered
an asexually (through the use of grafts and cuttings) reproduced a
distinct and new variety of plant, other than a tuber propagated plant
or a plant found in an uncultivated state. Algae and macro fungi are
regarded as plants, but bacteria are not.
Both sexually reproducible plants and asexually reproducible plants can
also receive utility patents.
Plant patents are subject to identical legal requirements that utility
patents are subject to. Plant patents obviously fall within the plant
statutory class, but other than that they must meet the same criteria as
a utility patent.
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