BNET Business Dictionary
Business Definition for: Patent
- a type of copyright granted as a fixed-term monopoly to an inventor by the state to prevent others copying an invention or improvement to a product or process.
The granting of a patent requires the publication of full details of the invention or improvement. The use of the patented information is restricted to the patent holder or any organizations licensed by them.
A patent's value is usually the sum of its development costs, or its purchase price if acquired from someone else. It is generally to a company's advantage to spread the patent's value over several years. If this is the case, the critical time period to consider is not the full life of the patent (17 years in the United States), but its estimated useful life.
For example, in January 2000 a company acquired a patent issued in January 1995 at a cost of $100,000. It concludes that the patent's useful commercial life is ten years, not the 12 remaining before the patent expires. In turn, patent value would be $100,000, and it would be spread (or amortized in accounting terms) over 10 years, or $10,000 each year.
Wiktionary Definition for: Patent
- A declaration issued by a government agency declaring someone the inventor of a new invention and having the privelege of stopping others from making, using or selling the claimed invention; a letter patent.
- A specific grant of ownership of a piece of property; a land patent.
- Patent leather: a varnished, high-gloss leather typically used for shoes and accessories.
- To successfully register an invention with a government agency; to secure a letter patent.
- # biology Open, unobstructed, expanded.
- Explicit and obvious.
Additional Resources
- Patent Sharks
- Technology firms face a serious menace: patent sharks. These predators collect patents through acquisitions in bankruptcy proceedings, licensing agreements, or their own R&D efforts. They hide their intellectual property--to deliberately trap tech firms into inadvertent patent...
- Articles 2008-07-18
- Is Microsoft violator or victim in i4i patent dispute?
- By Joe Wilcox, Betanews Perhaps they don't use Microsoft Office at the courthouse in Tyler, Texas? Could there be no computers at all and just Selectra typewriters? I have to wonder following yesterday's injunction barring Microsoft from shipping Word. I'm being snide because Tyler is the reputed "patent troll" capital...
- News items 2009-08-12
- Tech Companies Indulge in Patent Troll PR
- Verizon, Google, Cisco, Telefon AB, Ericsson, and HP are among a group of high tech companies planning to buy important IP before patent trolls snap them up, as the Wall Street Journal reports. But is this a real concern, or corporate spin? The mass of patent litigation is hardly all...
- Blog posts 2008-07-01
- Court Suggests Abbott Lawyer Cheated on Hytrin Patent
- A federal appeals court has strongly suggested that an "Abbott in-house attorney" is a cheat. In a ruling on whether Abbott Labs broke antitrust law in consipiring with generic makers to keep Hytrin, a hypertension and prostate enlargement drug, off the market, the judges described why they were sending the ...
- Blog posts 2009-01-26
- EFF Challenges VOIP Systems Patent
- As part of its Patent Busting Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation claims it has discovered prior patent, as well as published reference material, that should invalidate a patent granted to Acceris for implementing Voice over IP using analog telephones as endpoints.The EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking the USPTO (U.S....
- News items 2009-10-14
- Patent Evaluation Goes Public
- Inventions today are more complicated than ever, which makes it hard to judge the quality of new patents and relatively easy to get protection for half-baked ideas. Sooner or later, those half-baked inventions become the subject of bank-breaking litigation, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently said that needs to stop....
- Blog posts 2007-06-06
- Microsoft's Patent Dust-Ups
- Posted by: Aaron Ricadela on August 19 For the past half dozen years, Microsoft has been busily getting its patent house in order. In a bid to protect itself against lawsuits alleging that it has infringed on other companies' patents, Microsoft has issued more patents on its inventions and carefully...
- News items 2009-08-19
- Microsoft pushes for single global patent system
- A senior lawyer at Microsoft is calling for the creation of a global patent system to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world.In a blog posting on Tuesday, Microsoft's Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez said that a backlog of patent applications...
- News items 2009-09-02
- Microsoft Patent Lawsuit Could Spell Trouble for Open-Source Format
- Microsoft Word was ruled in violation of an XML-related patent by a Texas judge, who ordered Microsoft to stop selling its productivity suite and pay a small Canadian company, i4i, nearly $300 million. However, the lawsuit could also present trouble down the road for XML-based OpenDocument Format, an open-source alternative...
- News items 2009-08-13
- Microsoft Files Emergency Motion In Word Patent-Infringement Case
- Microsoft has filed a motion to stay a court ruling that could pull Microsoft Word from store shelves within 60 days. A U.S. District Court in East Texas ruled on Aug. 12 that Microsoft had violated an XML-related patent held by a small Canadian company, i4i. In addition to being...
- News items 2009-08-19
- Another Digimarc Patent Validated in Re-Examination; U.S. Patent Office Concludes Re-Examination of Third Patent Related to Verance Lawsuit, Expanding Number of Patent Claims
- Business Editors TUALATIN, Ore.--BUSINESS WIRE--May 15, 2002 Digimarc Corp. (Nasdaq:DMRC), the leader in digital watermarking solutions, announced today that the U.S. Patent Office re-examination of Patent Number 5,850,481 has concluded with an award of 45 patent claims to Digimarc -- an increase of 8 claims over the 37...
- Research articles 2002-05-15
- Microsoft, Apple, Google sued over icon software patent
- Cygnus Systems, Inc., a networking company based in Michigan, got into the holiday spirit by suing Microsoft, Apple, and Google for violating a patent it was recently awarded, which covers the navigation and access of files based on representational thumbnails. Products like Microsoft's Vista, Apple's Cover Flow feature, and Google's...
- News items 2009-08-07
- Oprah and her book club latest target of patent trolls
- Although it's possible to imagine a number of ways to present a book within a web browser, every one from Google to the press office of the National Academies of Science seems to have settled on a similar system, where individual images of pages are presented to the reader in...
- News items 2009-08-07
- Examine the patent that made selling Microsoft Word a crime
- Microsoft is barred from selling any Microsoft Word products that can open XML files (.xml, .docx and .docm), according to a U.S. District Court ruling in favor of i4i, a small Canadian company that sued the software giant for patent infringement. What's this mean Techmeme? For now, not much. Microsoft...
- News items 2009-08-12
- Elsevier's Scirus indexed 13 million patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) of the World Intellectual Property Organiza
- Elsevier's Scirus indexed 13 million patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office USPTO, the European Patent Office EPO, the Japanese Patent Office JPO, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT of the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO. The patent index data included in Scirus is...
- Research articles 2005-07-01
- Vicor Announces Reissue of Reset Patent by U.S. Patent Office
- ANDOVER, Mass.--BUSINESS WIRE--Feb. 17, 1999--Vicor Corporation ("Vicor") today announced that on February 16, 1999, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. patent RE36,098 (the "Reissue Patent") as a reissue of U.S. Patent 4,441,146 (the "Reset Patent"). The Reissue Patent includes original claims 1 through 5 of the Reset...
- Research articles 1999-02-17
- U.S. Patent Office Limits the Scope of Lexar Patent; The Decision Has No Bearing On SanDisk's Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Lexar Regarding Sandisk's U.S. Patent No. 5,602,987
- SUNNYVALE, Calif.--BUSINESS WIRE--Nov. 8, 1999-- SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK) said today that a decision by the U.S. Patent Office limits the scope of a patent held by Lexar Media, Inc., and has no bearing on the current patent infringement litigation initiated by SanDisk against Lexar in March of 1998. ...
- Research articles 1999-11-09
- Judge: Rambus destroyed docs related to patent lawsuit
- January 12, 2009 IDG News Service Rambus plans to appeal a decision by a Delaware judge who found that the company had destroyed documents related to patent lawsuits it has filed against other DRAM makers, ruling the patents unenforceable. Judge Sue Robinson of the U.S. District Court for the District...
- News items 2009-08-07
- Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease? An Overview Of Patent Reform Act Of 2005
- On June 8, 2005, Representative Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, along with several co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 2795. Popularly known as the "Patent Reform Act of 20051," the Patent Reform Act is an omnibus bill which overhauls multiple aspects of patent practice....
- White papers 2005-09-06
- PFIZER INC - Lipitor patent in Spain.
- European Patent Office Supports Validity of Lipitor Patent Madrid, Spain Court of Appeal Confirms Pfizer's Patent Claims NEW YORK, Oct. 27 -- Pfizer Inc said today that the European Patent Office ...
- Research articles 2006-10-27
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