To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Utility patents protect new, useful, and nonobvious processes, machines, manufactures, or compositions of matter. Utility patents have a duration of twenty years from the date of filing, but are not enforceable until the day of issuance. Design patents, which have a duration of fourteen years from the date of issuance, protect new, original, and ornamental designs for an article of manufacture.
Plant patents protect new varieties of asexually reproducing plants.
Utility patents are the most common type of protection, and are typically what people mean when they discuss patents. Design patent protection, however, can also be extremely useful for companies in the computer and Internet industries. T o obtain protection under U.S. law , the applicant must submit a patent application to the U.S.P.T.O., where it will be reviewed by an examiner to determine if the invention is patentable. U.S. law grants to patentees the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention, as opposed to the right to make, use, or sell the invention oneself. S oftware Patents are discussed in their own Software Patent Section of BitLaw.