If you’ve created something unique and something you believe to be marketable the subject of patents should be of immense interest to you. Without a patent your idea could be stolen from you. With a patent in place the concept, and its financial rewards, are yours for a minimum of 17 and a maximum of 20 years.
Does your new product qualify for a patent, however? To determine this you’ll need to not only prove its uniqueness but to also make sure it’s not disqualified for category.
In the United States, for example, the issuing federal agency is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This agency offers utility patents, the most common form of patent, on brand new designs that can prove usefulness. They can even patent new varieties of foliage such as plants.
What cannot be patented, however, are new pharmaceuticals that are determined to be unsafe, nuclear weapons, phenomena theoretical in nature, inventions that aren’t operable, non-operational changes such as aesthetic improvements, inventions whose primary purpose would be seen as illegal, and those considered by the patent office as “whimsical,” i.e., serving no serious...