Below is the first in our series of "IP Overview" documents, which are designed to provide a capsule description of the various flavors of intellectual property protection.  If you are new to IP, and you want to know more, we’re hoping that these posts will provide all of the information that you might need to get started.  Enjoy, and sound off in the comments if there’s a question you have about this subject that was not answered here.

by Mark Malek

A patent is an exclusive right granted to an inventor by the United States government to exclude others from making, using, selling, or offering to sell the invention that is the subject matter of the patent.  These rights are provided to the inventor in exchange for a full disclosure of the invention, which is published as public record for others in the field to learn from and hopefully improve upon.  This exchange of rights for information aims at promoting the progress of science by trying to remove the natural tendency to keep innovations a secret for competitive advantage.

The protection in a patent lies in the claims.  If one were to compare a patent to real estate, the claims of a patent are comparable to the property description of the deed.  In other words, the claims define the scope and breadth of the patent.  In the ideal scenario, the patent claims will carve out protection that is valuable to the inventor, i.e., define the invention in such a way that it is difficult to design around the protection granted in the patent.

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