Crochat was a French railway equipment construction company founded in 1899 by Henry Crochat. It is best known for building locomotives and railcars with petrol-electric transmission .
96-536: Reference This is not a complete list. Henry Crochat obtained some patents jointly with Emmanuel Colardeau, e.g. patent US1416611. There is no evidence that Colardeau was involved in Crochat's railway business but he may have been involved, with Crochat, in the design of the Saint-Chamond (tank) . This French railway -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Patent A patent
192-464: A decree by which new and inventive devices had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers. The period of protection was 10 years. As Venetians emigrated, they sought similar patent protection in their new homes. This led to the diffusion of patent systems to other countries. The English patent system evolved from its early medieval origins into
288-451: A case, the claimed subject-matter is considered to be of a technical nature and is not barred from patentability under Article 52(2)(c) and (3) EPC . It is then assessed, as a second step, whether the invention involves an inventive step , considering that the "features which do not contribute to the technical character of the invention cannot support the presence of an inventive step ( T 641/00 )". Per Chapter II, Section 3 , part (k) of
384-499: A class of patents which disclose and claim new methods of doing business. This includes new types of e-commerce, insurance, banking and tax compliance etc. Business method patents are a relatively new species of patent and there have been several reviews investigating the appropriateness of patenting business methods. Nonetheless, they have become important assets for both independent inventors and major corporations. In general, inventions are eligible for patent protection if they pass
480-453: A company helping another company to create a patented product or selling the patented product which is created by another company. There is also inducement to infringement, which is when a party induces or assists another party in violating a patent. An example of this would be a company paying another party to create a patented product in order to reduce their competitor's market share. This is important when it comes to gray market goods, which
576-768: A computer. The immediate response of the USPTO to this decision as of July 2014 has been to essentially stop allowing business method patents. The key issue is that examiners do not yet have clear guidance as to what is allowable under the Alice decision. In the 8th edition of the International Patent Classification (IPC), which entered into force on January 1, 2006, a special subclass has been created for business methods: " G06Q " (Data processing systems or methods, specially adapted for administrative, commercial, financial, managerial, supervisory or forecasting purposes). In
672-486: A fee depending upon the desired term of the patent (5, 10, 15 years), filed a description of the invention and were granted a patent. There was no preexamination. Validity was determined in courts. 14 out of 48 of the initial patents were for financial inventions. In June 1792, for example, a patent was issued to inventor F. P. Dousset for a type of tontine in combination with a lottery . These patents raised concerns and were banned and declared invalid in an amendment to
768-745: A license fee for a tax patent to declare that to the IRS. Several years later, in Alice v. CLS Bank , the Supreme Court readdressed the patent eligibility of a business method. It held patent ineligible a method of securing intermediated settlement—a form of electronic escrow. In invalidating Alice's patent, the Court announced a two-step test based on the Court's earlier decisions in Mayo v. Prometheus and Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co. This test first determines whether
864-490: A machine. Processes involving transformation of abstract financial data, such as that claimed in machine format in State Street , are probably patent ineligible. Second, processes that do not make patent-eligible transformations are patent eligible only if they are claimed to be carried out with a "particular machine." It appears that a programmed general-purpose digital computer is not a particular machine , for this purpose. It
960-552: A majority decision of the board in Ex Parte Lundgren , Appeal No. 2003-2088 (BPAI 2005). The board ruled that the "technological arts" requirement could not be sustained, as no such requirement existed in law. In light of Ex Parte Lundgren, the USPTO has issued interim guidelines for patent examiners to determine if a given claimed invention meets the statutory requirements of being a process, manufacture, composition of matter or machine (35 USC 101). These guidelines assert that
1056-403: A non-obvious inventive step. A patent is requested by filing a written application at the relevant patent office. The person or company filing the application is referred to as "the applicant". The applicant may be the inventor or its assignee. The application contains a description of how to make and use the invention that must provide sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art (i.e.,
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#17330940386401152-522: A particular business method that is an abstract idea does not become patentable merely because it is programmed into a computer as an algorithm. For a business method to be patentable, the algorithm cannot be the whole invention, but only one aspect of a novel combination. See Amazon.com, Inc. v The Attorney General of Canada, 2011 FCA 328, November 24, 2011 In April 2017, SIPO (i.e. the Chinese patent office) revised its patent examination guidelines to allow
1248-417: A patent covers or the "scope of protection". After filing, an application is often referred to as " patent pending ". While this term does not confer legal protection, and a patent cannot be enforced until granted, it serves to provide warning to potential infringers that if the patent is issued, they may be liable for damages. Once filed, a patent application is "prosecuted" . A patent examiner reviews
1344-426: A patent on "blind testing" whiskey blends for consumer preferences would be "a serious restraint upon the advance of science and industry" and therefore should be refused. For many years, the USPTO took the position that "methods of doing business" were not patentable. With the emergence in the 1980s and 1990s of patent applications on internet or computer enabled methods of doing commerce, however, USPTO found that it
1440-464: A patent. In the United States, however, only the inventor(s) may apply for a patent, although it may be assigned to a corporate entity subsequently and inventors may be required to assign inventions to their employers under an employment contract. In most European countries, ownership of an invention may pass from the inventor to their employer by rule of law if the invention was made in the course of
1536-702: A physical aspect, being a concrete, tangible, physical, or observable effect or phenomenon. Accordingly, 'pure' business methods, being those that do not have a physical aspect, are not patentable in Australia. It has been suggested that Grant v Commissioner of Patents was wrongly decided because the court failed to properly apply the existing law as set out in the decision of the High Court of Australia in National Research Development Corporation v Commissioner of Patents (1959) 102 CLR 252 and that
1632-427: A printing method entitled "A Mode of Preventing Counterfeiting" granted to John Kneass on April 28, 1815. The first fifty years of the U.S. Patent Office saw the granting of forty-one financial patents in the arts of bank notes (2 patents), bills of credit (1), bills of exchange (1), check blanks (4); detecting and preventing counterfeiting (10), coin counting (1), interest calculation tables (5), and lotteries (17). On
1728-591: A process, including a process for doing business, must produce a concrete, useful and tangible result in order to be patentable. It does not matter if the process is within the traditional technological arts or not. A price for a financial product, for example, is considered to be a concrete useful and tangible result (see State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group ). The USPTO has reasserted its position that literary works, compositions of music, compilations of data, legal documents (such as insurance policies ), and forms of energy (such as data packets transmitted over
1824-506: A prohibited act that is protected against by the patent. There is also the Doctrine of Equivalents. This doctrine protects from someone creating a product that is basically, by all rights, the same product that is protected with just a few modifications. In some countries, like the United States, there is liability for another two forms of infringement. One is contributory infringement, which is participating in another's infringement. This could be
1920-400: A right to make or use or sell an invention. Rather, a patent provides, from a legal standpoint, the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent , which is usually 20 years from the filing date subject to the payment of maintenance fees . From an economic and practical standpoint however, a patent
2016-506: A third party, without authorization from the patentee, makes, uses, or sells a patented invention. Patents, however, are enforced on a national basis. The making of an item in China, for example, that would infringe a US patent, would not constitute infringement under US patent law unless the item were imported into the US. Infringement includes literal infringement of a patent, meaning they are performing
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#17330940386402112-544: A unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states along with giving owners a 30-month priority for applications as opposed to the standard 12 the Paris Convention granted. A patent application filed under the PCT is called an international application, or PCT application. The steps for PCT applications are as follows: 1. Filing the PCT patent application 2. Examination during
2208-467: A yearly basis. Some countries or regional patent offices (e.g. the European Patent Office ) also require annual renewal fees to be paid for a patent application before it is granted. In the US, patent maintenance fees are due on 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 anniversaries of the patent issuance. Only ca. 50% of issued US patents are maintained full term. Large corporations tend to pay maintenance fees through
2304-502: Is patentable subject matter from country to country, also among WTO member states. TRIPS also provides that the term of protection available should be a minimum of twenty years. Some countries have other patent-like forms of intellectual property , such as utility models , which have a shorter monopoly period. The word patent originates from the Latin patere , which means "to lay open" (i.e., to make available for public inspection). It
2400-466: Is "a useful and important clue, an investigative tool, for determining whether some claimed inventions are processes under § 101. With respect to the facts of the case before it, the Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit's en banc rejection of an application for a patent on a method of stabilizing cost inputs in the energy industry by hedging price rises against decreases. The Court held that
2496-419: Is a shortened version of the term letters patent , which was an open document or instrument issued by a monarch or government granting exclusive rights to a person, predating the modern patent system. Similar grants included land patents , which were land grants by early state governments in the US, and printing patents , a precursor of modern copyright . In modern usage, the term patent usually refers to
2592-454: 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. The procedure for granting patents, requirements placed on
2688-597: Is better and perhaps more precisely regarded as conferring upon its proprietor "a right to try to exclude by asserting the patent in court", for many granted patents turn out to be invalid once their proprietors attempt to assert them in court. A patent is a limited property right the government gives inventors in exchange for their agreement to share details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged , assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned. A patent, being an exclusionary right, does not necessarily give
2784-449: Is even more pronounced when the number of patent applications is normalized by the country's population each year, or when the country of origin rather than country of filing is used. For the US, the population-normalized peak in patenting occurred in 1915, and the number of subsequent patents induced per patent has been mostly declining since 1926. A study of 4,512 patents obtained by Stanford University between 1970 and 2020 showed that
2880-700: Is evidence that some form of patent rights was recognized in Ancient Greece in the city of Sybaris , the first statutory patent system is generally regarded to be the Venetian Patent Statute of 1474. However, recent historical research has suggested that the 1474 Statute was inspired by laws in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that granted monopolies to developers of novel silk-making techniques. Patents were systematically granted in Venice as of 1474, where they issued
2976-517: Is no general prohibition on the patentability of business methods in Australia. Their patentability is determined by applying the tests used to determine the patentability of any type of invention. However, in the decision of Grant v Commissioner of Patents [2006] FCAFC 120, at paragraph [47], the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia held that a business method will only be patentable if it has
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3072-618: Is patentable. Patentable material must be synthetic, meaning that anything natural cannot be patented. For example, minerals, materials, genes, facts, organisms, and biological processes cannot be patented, but if someone were to apply an inventive, non-obvious, step to them to synthesize something new, the result could be patentable. That includes genetically engineered strains of bacteria, as was decided in Diamond v. Chakrabarty. Patentability also depends on public policy and ethical standards. Additionally, patentable materials must be novel, useful, and
3168-436: Is sent by the patent office, or the patent application is granted, which after the payment of additional fees, leads to an issued, enforceable patent. In some jurisdictions, there are opportunities for third parties to bring an opposition proceeding between grant and issuance, or post-issuance. Once granted the patent is subject in most countries to renewal fees to keep the patent in force. These fees are generally payable on
3264-533: Is the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property , initially signed in 1883. The Paris Convention sets out a range of basic rules relating to patents, and although the convention does not have direct legal effect in all national jurisdictions, the principles of the convention are incorporated into all notable current patent systems. The Paris Convention set a minimum patent protection of 20 years, but
3360-463: Is therefore only useful for protecting an invention in the country in which that patent is granted. In other words, patent law is territorial in nature. When a patent application is published, the invention disclosed in the application becomes prior art and enters the public domain (if not protected by other patents) in countries where a patent applicant does not seek protection, the application thus generally becoming prior art against anyone (including
3456-649: Is unclear from Bilski whether a particular machine must be novel and nonobvious, and specially adapted for carrying out the new process. The Supreme Court's decision in Parker v. Flook seems to call for that, but the Bilski court did not choose to opine on this point at that time. The majority opinion in In re Bilski refused to hold business methods categorically ineligible on any ground. Judge Mayer's dissent, however, seconded by Judges Dyk's and Linn's concurring opinion, insisted that
3552-434: Is when a patent owner sells a product in country A, wherein they have the product patented, then another party buys and sells it, without the owner's permission, in country B, wherein the owner also has a patent for the product. With either national or regional exhaustion being the law the in country B, the owner may still be able to enforce their patent rights; however, if country B has a policy of international exhaustion, then
3648-570: The Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity and its system of Access and Benefit-Sharing . Representatives of Indigenous peoples view the GRATK Treaty as a "first step towards guaranteeing just and transparent access to these resources." Before filing for an application, which must be paid for whether a patent is granted or not, a person will want to ensure that their material
3744-472: The U.S. Congress was passed on April 10, 1790, titled "An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts". The first patent under the Act was granted on July 31, 1790, to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a method of producing potash (potassium carbonate). A revised patent law was passed in 1793, and in 1836 a major revision was passed. The 1836 law instituted a significantly more rigorous application process, including
3840-459: The WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (GRATK Treaty) mandating patent disclosure requirements for patents based on genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge from being granted. The Treaty contemplates revocation for patents incorrectly filed. The treaty, and in particular its planned extension, is seen as complementing
3936-745: The World Trade Organization (WTO) being particularly active in this area. The TRIPS Agreement has been largely successful in providing a forum for nations to agree on an aligned set of patent laws. Conformity with the TRIPS agreement is a requirement of admission to the WTO and so compliance is seen by many nations as important. This has also led to many developing nations, which may historically have developed different laws to aid their development, enforcing patents laws in line with global practice. Internationally, there are international treaty procedures, such as
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4032-411: The "technological arts" in order to be patentable. This was based on an unpublished decision of the U.S. Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences , Ex Parte Bowman , 61 USPQ2d 1665, 1671 (Bd Pat. App. & Inter. 2001). This requirement could be met by merely requiring that the invention be carried out on a computer. In October 2005 the USPTO's own administrative judges overturned this position in
4128-575: The 18th century through a slow process of judicial interpretation of the law. During the reign of Queen Anne , patent applications were required to supply a complete specification of the principles of operation of the invention for public access. Legal battles around the 1796 patent taken out by James Watt for his steam engine , established the principles that patents could be issued for improvements of an already existing machine and that ideas or principles without specific practical application could also legally be patented. The English legal system became
4224-578: The Alice decision. Allowances per month for patents related to finance dropped to 10% of their pre Alice value. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has reacted in a similar manner. Only about 20% of the appealed business method rejections by patent examiners are getting reversed by the board. Whether a business method is regarded as patentable subject matter depends on the legal jurisdiction . The World Trade Organization 's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) does not specifically address business method patents. There
4320-473: The Indian Patent Act, business methods are not patentable per se. However they are patentable if a new method solves a "technical" problem and an apparatus/system is involved. Current US case law Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (decided June 2014) requires that in order for a business method to be patentable, it must be "significantly more" than simply implementing a well-known business process on
4416-520: The Internet), are not considered "manufactures" and hence, by themselves, are not patentable. Nonetheless, the USPTO has requested comments from the public on this position. In 2006, Justice Kennedy of the US Supreme Court cast aspersions on business method patents when he commented that some of them were of "potential vagueness and suspect validity". This was expressed in a concurring opinion to
4512-471: The Supreme Court had held patent-ineligible would be held patent-eligible. In Bilski v. Kappos , 561 U.S. 593 (2010), the Supreme Court held that the machine-or-transformation test is not the sole test for determining whether a claim comes within the "process" subject matter of the Patent Act and is thus patent eligible. Rather than being an exclusive test for eligibility, the machine-or-transformation test
4608-794: The UK, substantive patent law is contained in the Patents Act 1977 as amended. In the United States, the Constitution empowers Congress to make laws to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts ...". The laws Congress passed are codified in Title 35 of the United States Code and created the United States Patent and Trademark Office . There is a trend towards global harmonization of patent laws, with
4704-571: The US patent system is limited to technology and therefore it excludes trade and business expedients. Judge Mayer equated the US Constitution's limitation of patent grants to the "useful arts" to a limitation to technology, relying on case law stating that technology is the modern equivalent of useful arts. In November 2007, the United States Internal Revenue Service proposed rules that would require tax filers who paid
4800-542: The US, plant breeders' rights are sometimes called plant patents , and utility models and Gebrauchsmuster are sometimes called petty patents or innovation patents . The additional qualification utility patent is sometimes used (primarily in the US) to distinguish the primary meaning from these other types of patents. Particular types of patents for inventions include biological patents , business method patents , chemical patents and software patents . Although there
4896-445: The applicant) who might seek patent protection for the invention in those countries. Commonly, a nation or a group of nations forms a patent office with responsibility for operating that nation's patent system, within the relevant patent laws. The patent office generally has responsibility for the grant of patents, with infringement being the remit of national courts. The authority for patent statutes in different countries varies. In
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#17330940386404992-526: The benefits of using each other's patented inventions. Freedom Licenses like the Apache 2.0 License are a hybrid of copyright/trademark/patent license/contract due to the bundling nature of the three intellectual properties in one central license. This can make it difficult to enforce because patent licenses cannot be granted this way under copyright and would have to be considered a contract. In most countries, both natural persons and corporate entities may apply for
5088-601: The case of eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. There has been considerable speculation as to how this opinion might affect future business method patent litigation, particularly where a patent owner seeks an injunction to stop an infringer. In 2006, three Justices (Breyer, J., joined by Stevens and Souter, JJ.) dissented from the dismissal of certiorari as improvidently granted in Laboratory Corp. of Am. Holdings v. Metabolite Labs., Inc. , arguing that State Street enunciated an erroneous legal test under which processes that
5184-550: The claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea, law of nature, mathematical formula, or similar abstraction. If it is, the court is to proceed to the second step—determining whether the way the claimed invention implements the abstraction contains an inventive concept, as contrasted with being routine and conventional. Under the Alice test, the claimed invention is patent eligible only if it contains an inventive concept. The USPTO business method examining art units responded quickly to
5280-400: The course of the 20th and 21st centuries, however, disparity is still prevalent. In the UK, for example, only 8% of inventors were female as of 2015. This can partly be attributed to historical barriers for women to obtain patents, as well as to the fact that women are underrepresented in traditionally "patent-intensive" sectors, particularly STEM sectors. Marcowitz-Bitton et al. argue that
5376-448: The court should not have imposed a physical aspect requirement. A business method must be more than an abstract idea or theorem, otherwise it is not patentable in Canada. In order to be patentable, the business method must have a practical application. However, a business method that is an abstract idea does not become patentable merely because it has a practical application. For example,
5472-640: The establishment of an examination system. Between 1790 and 1836 about ten thousand patents were granted. By the American Civil War about 80,000 patents had been granted. In the US, married women were historically precluded from obtaining patents. While section 1 of the Patent Act of 1790 did refer to "she", married women were unable to own property in their own name and were also prohibited from rights to their own income, including income from anything they invented. This historical gender gap has lessened over
5568-456: The exclusive for process patents, would have made ineligible many business-method patents granted in the last decade. Although the Supreme Court rejected its exclusive use, the test is still important as a "useful and important clue" for determining patent eligibility of claimed process inventions. Under this test: first, processes that transform an article from one state or thing to another are patent eligible regardless of whether their use requires
5664-450: The extent that a European patent application or European patent relates to such subject-matter or activities as such". However, "[i]f the claimed subject-matter specifies technical means, such as computers, computer networks or other programmable apparatus, for executing at least some steps of a business method, it is not limited to excluded subject-matter as such and thus not excluded from patentability under Art. 52(2)(c) and (3)." In such
5760-631: The first modern patent system that recognised intellectual property in order to stimulate invention; this was the crucial legal foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution could emerge and flourish. By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually abuse the granting of letters patent for monopolies . After public outcry, King James I of England (VI of Scotland ) was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for "projects of new invention". This
5856-604: The foundation for patent law in countries with a common law heritage, including the United States, New Zealand and Australia . In the Thirteen Colonies , inventors could obtain patents through petition to a given colony's legislature. In 1641, Samuel Winslow was granted the first patent in North America by the Massachusetts General Court for a new process for making salt. The modern French patent system
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#17330940386405952-404: The full term, while small companies are more likely to abandon their patents earlier, even though the due fees are ca. 5 times lower for small businesses (microentities). The costs of preparing and filing a patent application, prosecuting it until grant and maintaining the patent vary from one jurisdiction to another, and may also be dependent upon the type and complexity of the invention, and on
6048-510: The gender gap in patents is also a result of internal bias within the patent system. The number of patent applications filed each year has been growing for most countries although not smoothly, and jumps in activity are often observed due to changes in local laws. The high number of patent families for Spain in the 1800s is related to the superior preservation and cataloguing of the data by Spanish Patent and Trademark Office compared to other countries (see 1836 U.S. Patent Office fire ). The US
6144-494: The international phase 3. Examination during the national phase. Alongside these international agreements for patents there was the Patent Law Treaty (PLT). This treaty standardized the filing date requirements, standardized the application and forms, allows for electronic communication and filing, and avoids unintentional loss of rights, and simplifies patent office procedures. Sometimes, nations grant others, other than
6240-415: The invention be exploited in the jurisdiction it covers. Consequences of not working an invention vary from one country to another, ranging from revocation of the patent rights to the awarding of a compulsory license awarded by the courts to a party wishing to exploit a patented invention. The patentee has the opportunity to challenge the revocation or license, but is usually required to provide evidence that
6336-561: The inventor's normal or specifically assigned employment duties, where an invention might reasonably be expected to result from carrying out those duties, or if the inventor had a special obligation to further the interests of the employer's company. Applications by artificial intelligence systems, such as DABUS , have been rejected in the US, the UK, and at the European Patent Office on the grounds they are not natural persons. The inventors, their successors or their assignees become
6432-445: The investment strategy set forth in the application was an "abstract idea," making it ineligible under that exception to the general subject-matter areas listed in the Patent Act. The Supreme Court's decision in Bilski v. Kappos affirmed but sharply qualified the Federal Circuit's 2008 en banc decision in In re Bilski . The decision announced a "machine-or-transformation" test of patent eligibility that, if it had been accepted as
6528-482: The law passed in 1792. In Britain, a patent was issued in 1778 to John Knox for a "[p]lan for assurances on lives of persons from 10 to 80 years of age." At this time in British law, patents could only be issued for manufactured objects, not manufacturing processes. Patents have been granted in the United States on methods for doing business since the US patent system was established in 1790. The first financial patent
6624-437: The licensee the right to make, use, sell, or import the claimed invention, usually in return for a royalty or other compensation. It is common for companies engaged in complex technical fields to enter into multiple license agreements associated with the production of a single product. Moreover, it is equally common for competitors in such fields to license patents to each other under cross-licensing agreements in order to share
6720-644: The most significant aspect of the convention is the provision of the right to claim priority : filing an application in any one member state of the Paris Convention preserves the right for one year to file in any other member state, and receive the benefit of the original filing date. Another key treaty is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and covering more than 150 countries. The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides
6816-418: The other hand, cases such as Hotel Security Checking Co. v. Lorraine Co. , 160 F. 467 (2d Cir. 1908), which held that a bookkeeping system to prevent embezzlement by waiters was unpatentable, were often read to imply a "business method exception", in which business methods are unpatentable. Another such case was Joseph E. Seagram & Sons v. Marzell , 180 F.2d 26 (D.C. Cir. 1950), in which the court held that
6912-399: The patent application to determine if it meets the patentability requirements of that country. If the application does not comply, objections are communicated to the applicant or their patent agent or attorney through an Office action , to which the applicant may respond. The number of Office actions and responses that may occur vary from country to country, but eventually a final rejection
7008-400: The patent owner seeks monetary compensation ( damages ) for past infringement, and seeks an injunction that prohibits the defendant from engaging in future acts of infringement, or seeks either damages or injunction. To prove infringement, the patent owner must establish that the accused infringer practises all the requirements of at least one of the claims of the patent. (In many jurisdictions
7104-488: The patent owner the right to exploit the invention subject to the patent. For example, many inventions are improvements of prior inventions that may still be covered by someone else's patent. If an inventor obtains a patent on improvements to an existing invention which is still under patent, they can only legally use the improved invention if the patent holder of the original invention gives permission, which they may refuse. Some countries have "working provisions" that require
7200-427: The patent owner will have no legal grounds for enforcing the patent in country B as it was already sold in a different country. Patents can generally only be enforced through civil lawsuits (for example, for a US patent, by an action for patent infringement in a United States federal district court), although some countries (such as France and Austria ) have criminal penalties for wanton infringement. Typically,
7296-537: The patent owner, permissions to create a patented product based on different situations that align with public policy or public interest. These may include compulsory licenses, scientific research, and in transit in country. After two decades of drafting, the WIPO 's Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore moved to a Diplomatic Conference in May 2024 and adopted
7392-562: The patent should never have been granted. There are several grounds for challenges: the claimed subject matter is not patentable subject matter at all; the claimed subject matter was actually not new, or was obvious to the person skilled in the art , at the time the application was filed; or that some kind of fraud was committed during prosecution with regard to listing of inventors, representations about when discoveries were made, etc. Patents can be found to be invalid in whole or in part for any of these reasons. Patent infringement occurs when
7488-665: The patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims that define the scope of protection that is being sought. A patent may include many claims, each of which defines a specific property right. Under the World Trade Organization 's (WTO) TRIPS Agreement , patents should be available in WTO member states for any invention, in all fields of technology , provided they are new , involve an inventive step , and are capable of industrial application . Nevertheless, there are variations on what
7584-537: The patenting of business methods provided the method had technical features. According to Brazilian Patent Law 9279, " commercial, accounting, financial, educational, advertising, raffling, and inspection schemes, plans, principles or methods " are not considered to be inventions or Utility Models. Under the European Patent Convention (EPC), "[s]chemes, rules and methods for (...) doing business" are not regarded as inventions and are not patentable , "to
7680-679: The permission of the other proprietor(s). The ability to assign ownership rights increases the liquidity of a patent as property. Inventors can obtain patents and then sell them to third parties. The third parties then own the patents and have the same rights to prevent others from exploiting the claimed inventions, as if they had originally made the inventions themselves. The grant and enforcement of patents are governed by national laws, and also by international treaties, where those treaties have been given effect in national laws. Patents are granted by national or regional patent offices, i.e. national or regional administrative authorities. A given patent
7776-587: The procedures under the European Patent Convention (EPC) [constituting the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg)], that centralize some portion of the filing and examination procedure. Similar arrangements exist among the member states of ARIPO and OAPI , the analogous treaties among African countries, and the nine CIS member states that have formed the Eurasian Patent Organization . A key international convention relating to patents
7872-443: The proprietors of the patent when and if it is granted. If a patent is granted to more than one proprietor, the laws of the country in question and any agreement between the proprietors may affect the extent to which each proprietor can exploit the patent. For example, in some countries, each proprietor may freely license or assign their rights in the patent to another person while the law in other countries prohibits such actions without
7968-400: The reasonable requirements of the public have been met by the working of invention. In most jurisdictions, there are ways for third parties to challenge the validity of an allowed or issued patent at the national patent office; these are called opposition proceedings . It is also possible to challenge the validity of a patent in court. In either case, the challenging party tries to prove that
8064-437: The relevant area of technology) to make and use the invention. In some countries there are requirements for providing specific information such as the usefulness of the invention, the best mode of performing the invention known to the inventor, or the technical problem or problems solved by the invention. Drawings illustrating the invention may also be provided. The application also includes one or more claims that define what
8160-461: The relevant country. Although an infringer is generally free to rely on any available ground of invalidity (such as a prior publication , for example), some countries have sanctions to prevent the same validity questions being relitigated. An example is the UK Certificate of contested validity . Patent licensing agreements are contracts in which the patent owner (the licensor) agrees to grant
8256-502: The right granted to anyone who invents something new, useful and non-obvious. A patent is often referred to as a form of intellectual property right, an expression which is also used to refer to trademarks and copyrights , and which has proponents and detractors (see also Intellectual property § The term "intellectual property" ). Some other types of intellectual property rights are also called patents in some jurisdictions: industrial design rights are called design patents in
8352-443: The scope of the patent may not be limited to what is literally stated in the claims, for example due to the doctrine of equivalents .) An accused infringer has the right to challenge the validity of the patent allegedly being infringed in a counterclaim . A patent can be found invalid on grounds described in the relevant patent laws, which vary between countries. Often, the grounds are a subset of requirements for patentability in
8448-423: The tests of patentability : patentable subject matter , novelty , inventive step or non-obviousness , and industrial applicability (or utility ). A business method may be defined as "a method of operating any aspect of an economic enterprise". On January 7, 1791, France passed a patent law that stated that "Any new discovery or invention, in all types of industry, is owned by its author...". Inventors paid
8544-532: The type of patent. The European Patent Office estimated in 2005 that the average cost of obtaining a European patent (via a Euro-direct application, i.e. not based on a PCT application) and maintaining the patent for a 10-year term was around €32,000. Since the London Agreement entered into force on May 1, 2008, this estimation is however no longer up-to-date, since fewer translations are required. Business method patent Business method patents are
8640-431: The university's patenting activity plateaued in the 2010s. Incidentally, only 20% of Stanford patents in that dataset produced a positive net income for the university, while the rest was a net loss. Similar declines have been noted not only for the number of patents, but also for other measures of innovation output. Several hypotheses have been proposed as explanations for the observed decline: A patent does not give
8736-491: Was challenged in the 1998 State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group , (47 USPQ 2d 1596 ( CAFC 1998)). The court affirmed the position of the USPTO and rejected the theory that a "method of doing business" was excluded subject matter. The court further confirmed this principle with AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc. , (50 USPQ 2d 1447 (Fed. Cir. 1999)). The USPTO continued to require, however, that business method inventions must apply, involve, use or advance
8832-466: Was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination since inventor's right was considered as a natural one. Patent costs were very high (from 500 to 1,500 francs). Importation patents protected new devices coming from foreign countries. The patent law was revised in 1844 – patent cost was lowered and importation patents were abolished. The first Patent Act of
8928-402: Was granted on March 19, 1799, to Jacob Perkins of Massachusetts for an invention for "Detecting Counterfeit Notes." All details of Perkins' invention, which presumably was a device or process in the printing art, were lost in the great Patent Office fire of 1836 . Its existence is only known from other sources. The first financial patent for which any detailed written description survives was to
9024-594: Was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies (1624) in which Parliament restricted the Crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years. The Statute became the foundation for later developments in patent law in England and elsewhere. Important developments in patent law emerged during
9120-473: Was no longer practical to determine if a particular computer implemented invention was a technological invention or a business invention. Consequently, they took the position that examiners would not have to determine if a claimed invention was a method of doing business or not. They would determine patentability based on the same statutory requirements as any other invention. The subsequent allowance of patents on computer implemented methods for doing business
9216-588: Was the World's leader in terms of patent families filed between 1900 and 1966, when Japan took over. Since 2007 PR China leads. However, in most technologically advanced countries (see, for example, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the UK in the figure on the right, as well as in Poland ), the total (i.e. regardless of the priority/inventors' country) number of patent families filed there have been declining in absolute numbers since c. 1970s –1980s. The decline
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