Whether by enabling you to exclude others or by enabling you to license an invention or design to be used or produced by others, intellectual property rights are a valuable means of assisting in the exploitation and transfer of technology. This is particularly important to those without the capacity to satisfy market demand from their own resources, such as universities and small companies which may license the invention to others that do have such resources. A patent provides the legal right to exclude others from exploiting an invention that is a technical or scientific development having some practical application and which is described in the patent. In most countries this right, once granted, will last for up to 20 years from the date the patent was applied for. In general, separate applications must be filed in the countries in which protection is sought for international protection, although there are a number of ways of cutting down the expense.
Most countries have certain public policy exclusions to deprive certain inventions of protection.
The important point to make is that the layperson should never make a judgement as to whether a particular invention can be patented. This is a question on which the professional advice of a patent attorney should be sought. A patent attorney should not be consulted over every invention. Many inventions simply do not warrant the expense of a patent in commercial terms, or will enjoy better alternative forms of protection. Equally however, to ignore patents would be foolish.