What are Patents?
Patents are a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor. These rights are granted for a limited period of time, usually about twenty years. The granting of these rights is in return for public disclosure of the invention.
Criteria for Patentability
Patents protect inventions. These inventions could be either products or processes. All inventions are required to meet the criteria for patentability. These criteria are the presence of a patentable subject matter, novelty, nonobviousness andutility/industrial application. The criterion of an inventive step is particularly important. Mere discoveries are not patentable, and neither are algorithms.
