Patent Law Requirements

• Inventing better ways of doing things is at the heart of the American mythos. Men like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford are held up as examples of people who had a great idea and patented their idea. Not only do patented ideas sometimes change society, but they can also lead to profit or a place in history. United States Patent Law is the process by which your new idea can be protected, allowing you time to work on it, or allowing you to profit from licensing fees if anyone decides to use your idea in their product.
  
  

Newness

• Patent law requires that there be some newness to the device being patented. For functional purposes, this means the device cannot be known to the public prior to the patent request, and it also cannot have been described in a publication or used in public for longer than one year prior to the patent request. This gives you one year to file a patent request after making known the specifics of the item you want to patent. The law is unforgiving, so allowing this period to run out by a few days may result in your patent request being denied.
  
  

Nonobvious

• A second patent law requirement is that your device or idea be "nonobvious," meaning that it cannot be materially similar to previously used or patented devices, and it must be novel enough that it is significantly different from other such machines or concepts already on the market. It cannot be something as simple as patenting a new lawnmower with a red engine as opposed to a black engine, for example.
  
  

Usefullness

• One interesting patent law requirement is the concept of "usefulness." A machine or device patented under the law must perform its intended function and do what it is purported to do or the patent request will be denied. Patents often are placed on theoretical items, but at some point the idea must have been tested or must at least appear on paper as being viable based on accepted theories.