As a piece of intellectual property a patent is considered a property right and can be bought, sold, willed to heirs, etc. The patentee is not necessarily the assignee of the rights to the patent. The recipient of the patent rights. The assignee may be a U.S. or foreign company or individual of the U.S. or a foreign government. The assignee is not necessarily the inventor of the invention being patented.
Many inventors assign the rights to their inventions over to other individuals or institutions.
It is very important to have a good understanding of the classification system in order to be able to conduct a useful patent search as it is the main point of access for locating patents in any particular area of technology. It is a CD-ROM computer system with files on patent and trademark information that is provided to all of the libraries in the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program. This page is maintained by Thomas Melvin , Reference Dept.