patents
A patent is a title of intellectual property that grants protection to an invention. It confers its owner a right to prevent others from using the invention within a delimited area and for a period of time (usually 20 years). When someone applies for a patent, this is called an "application" until the first validation step at the patent office. Then, it becomes a "publication" that is made public (at the date of publication). If the publication meets the requirements of the patent office, it will be granted. The right to exclude others from using the invention will be enforced after that last step. Patent family and priority:To resume our contribution to the definition of patent family on Wikipedia, it is possible to "trace" the story of a technology or invention. From the initial application (one of the priority patents of the family) setting the main features of an invention or technology, it is not unusual that with time this initial patent (priority patent) will be completed (technological extension) or extended to other patent offices (geographical extension) to widen its enforcement. The collected references have to be mentioned in the documents concerning the patent in order to trace the history of the invention. This set of priorities is called a patent family. To deal with the millions of patents and the heterogeneity of bureaucratic procedures, there are several methods to set up patent families:
Priority patent:A patent is called a priority patent when it does not mention a priority (none of the patents belonging to the family is related to the content of this patent on a technological or geographical basis.) This patent can be at the root of a patent family or singleton. A singleton patent is the unique member of a family. Priority patents are very useful because:
Text by Sciences, technologies and visualizations, translation by Hélène Hirsinger Articles related to patents: |