What is a Patent? – Here’s One!
What is in a Patent and What does it look like? Example of a Patent
I'm Rich Beem. I'm a patent attorney. Thank you for joining me today. I would like to talk with you about patents and I would like to show you a patent. This is an actual patent that we just received in the last few days that we are sending out to our client. The client is in Slovenia. And this is a patent that has to do with a preservative for wood. You can see that on the front there's a gold seal and there's a red ribbon, there's a blue strip. And this is signed by the director of the US Patent and Trademark Office who is also the Under Secretary of Commerce. You'll only get one original patent.
So you want to hold on to this, because if you ever need to prove that you own this patent, if you want to stop someone else from infringing, this makes a great exhibit for the jury. It's good at trial. There are copies of patents, but there's only one original and it cannot be replaced.
Inside there are the parts of a patent. There's information about maintenance fees and the patent term. A patent is good for 20 years from filing. This has the inventor's name. This is Mica Humar of Slovenia who invented this wood preservative. The names of the inventors, the prior art references, there's an abstract. Normally, if there's any kind of mechanical invention, we would have drawings, but we do not have a drawing in this patent. But what we have is a detailed description in two columns of why this wood preservative is better than other wood preservatives. And there's a table here that shows some data. In chemical patents you have data, you have tables. In mechanical patents you have drawings. And at the very end is the claims.
Now, the claims are the most important part of a patent. Why? Because they define what the scope of the patent is. If you have a piece of property, if you have a home, you have a deed that defines what your property is. And if anyone sets foot on your property, they're trespassing. Well, it's the same way with a patent. If someone sets foot on one of your claims, they are infringing your patent and you can stop them. You can stop them in federal court.
That's what a patent does. It gives you the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling your patented invention. And what I do as a patent attorney is I help to define what your invention is. I help to describe it. You bring me the information, bring me the sketches, bring me the drawings, bring me the data, bring me all the details. And I will put them into a patent application and file it for you in the US Patent and Trademark Office. And I will negotiate with the examiner to get this patent issued, which we are sending out today to the patent attorney that we work with in Slovenia. We work with patent attorneys and inventors from all over the world.
Why do I tell you this? Because you may need a patent attorney. If you do, call me. I'm at 312-201-0011. Thank you for joining me today.
