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1 1 (August 15, 2024)

handle is hein.crs/goveqjs0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Service Informing the legislative debate since 1914 0 August 15, 2024 Patent Law: An Introduction and Issues for Congress Patents, a form of intellectual property, give their owners certain exclusive rights in new and useful inventions. To encourage innovation, the Constitution gives Congress the power to grant patents to inventors for a limited time. Patents have been a part of federal law ever since Congress enacted the first Patent Act in 1790. Patents play a critical role in many industries, such as pharmaceuticals and computer technologies. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) estimated in a 2022 study that utility patent-intensive industries contributed $4.4 trillion to the U.S. GDP and directly employed 18.2 million people in 2019. In light of patents' effect on innovation and technological competitiveness, Congress often considers amendments to patent law. This In Focus provides an overview of patent law and highlights potential areas of congressional interest. (For more detail, see CRS Report R46525, Patent Law: A Handbook for Congress.) Patent Prosecu on To obtain a patent, an inventor must file a patent application with USPTO. The patent applicant must describe the claimed invention in detail through words and drawings in a written specification. The application must also propose written patent claims, which define the legal scope of the claimed invention. The patent application process is called patent examination or patent prosecution. During prosecution, a USPTO patent examiner determines whether the application and claimed invention meet the legal requirements for patentability discussed below. If so, USPTO issues (i.e., grants) the patent. In FY2023, USPTO received nearly 600,000 utility patent applications and issued over 300,000 patents. Patentabity Requirements Patent-E igible Subject Matter and Utilty Section 101 of the Patent Act allows patents on any process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. Congress thus sought to ensure that almost anything made by humans may be patented if it meets the other patentability requirements. For example, new inventions in fields ranging from chemistry and computers to agriculture and manufacturing are all potentially patent-eligible. Section 101 also requires an invention to be useful to be patented. The standard for the utility requirement is low, requiring only that the claimed invention have some benefit to the public that is not so vague as to be meaningless. Nove ty and NonobvIousness Perhaps the most fundamental patentability requirement is that the claimed invention must be novel (i.e., new). Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, USPTO does not issue a patent if it finds that the claimed invention was already disclosed in the inventions that are already publicly known in the prior art (e.g., an earlier patent, product, or publication). USPTO therefore denies a patent if the claimed invention had already been patented, publicly described, publicly used, or on sale before the patent application was filed. Even if a claimed invention is novel because it is not identically disclosed in the prior art, the invention must also be nonobvious to be patentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103. USPTO and courts consider many factors in determining whether an invention is obvious from the perspective of a person with ordinary skill in the relevant field. For example, an invention may be obvious if it differs only slightly from prior inventions or merely combines known elements in a predictable way. DIsc osure-Related Patentablty Requirements The Patent Act also contains several requirements relating to the disclosures in the patent application. For example, under 35 U.S.C. § 112, the application must enable the invention by describing it with enough detail to teach a person of ordinary skill in the field how to make and use it. The enablement requirement ensures that the public can use the patented technology after the patent expires. In addition, a patent's claims, which define the patent holder's legal rights, must be sufficiently definite (i.e., clear and well- defined) to inform others in the field what is covered by the patent, and what is not. Patent Term and Rights A valid U.S. patent gives the patent holder a temporary monopoly on the invention in the United States, in exchange for disclosing it to the public. (USPTO publishes both granted patents and patent applications.) This means that the patent holder has the exclusive right to practice the invention in the United States until the patent expires. Any other person who makes, uses, sells, or imports the invention without permission from the patent holder is said to infringe the patent and may be liable for various legal remedies if the patent holder sues them in court. A patent's term begins on the date that the patent application is granted and ends 20 years after the date that the underlying patent application was filed with USPTO. Because patent examination typically takes a little more than 2 years, an average effective patent term is about 17 or 18 years. The Patent Act allows for extensions of a patent's term based on delays in patent examination or in obtaining regulatory approval for patented drugs and medical devices. Ownership of a patent initially vests with the inventor or inventors. Like other personal property, patents may be transferred or assigned to others. For example, employment contracts often require employees to assign patent rights in

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