A patent is an intellectual property right that grants you exclusive protection over your invention for up to 20 years.  By securing a patent, you can prevent competitors from making, using, or selling it without your consent.

A patent can give your business a genuine competitive edge.  The exclusivity a patent provides can help attract early-stage investment, deter competitors and establish a stronger commercial position in your market.  Patents can also be used to generate licensing revenue and reduce your corporation tax.

Patents protect developments in science or engineering, which covers almost anything of a technical nature that is capable of industrial application.  This includes physical apparatus, methods of manufacture or use, chemical or biological formulations, and computer programs.

UK and European legislation excludes the protection of certain categories of invention for various reasons, e.g. because they are insufficiently technical, better protected by other rights, lack industrial application, or their protection would violate ethics, policy or morality.

Examples include those where the novel contribution is essentially a business method; presentation of information; gaming rules; discovery, theory or mathematical method; creative work; software with a non-technical application; or method of medical treatment or diagnosis.

To be granted a patent, your invention must be new and inventive over everything already in the public domain anywhere in the world (termed “prior art”).  Prior art includes anything currently in use, offered on the market, disclosed at events, or described in printed or online publications.

Inventiveness means that the new features provided by your invention must not be obvious to someone skilled in that area of technology.

Yes!  Any information available to the public before your patent application has been filed at the patent office may constitute prior art that could render your invention known or obvious.  This includes any non-confidential disclosure of your own invention, e.g. via pre-filing sales or marketing of your products or processes.

It is therefore important to keep the details of your invention secret at least until a patent application has been filed.  Although grace periods exist in some countries to protect against self-disclosure, they do not apply to UK or European patents.

There are several stages in the lifecycle of a patent:

1. Prepare & file patent specification

The patent specification is the document a patent attorney prepares which describes your invention and defines the scope of protection you hope to obtain.  Once the specification has been filed at the patent office, it gets a filing date and application number.

2. Search & examination

The patent office will then perform a search for prior art and issue an examination report which specifies any objections against the application and sets a deadline for submitting amendments and/or arguments in response.  If objections remain after the first response, the patent office issues a further examination report.  This cycle continues until all issues are resolved or the application is abandoned, withdrawn or refused.

3. Grant

Once all of the objections have been overcome, the application is allowed for grant.  It can then be enforced against infringers.

4. Renewal

After grant (and in some jurisdictions, also during pendency) renewal fees must be paid to the patent office to keep the patent in force.  After 20 years from the filing date (assuming the renewal fees were paid), the patent will finally expire allowing third parties to use the technology without permission.

The length of time between filing and grant will vary from case to case and depends on the number and type of objections raised against the application as well as the backlog at the patent office.  It is common for patent application to be pending for several years before they are granted, but it is possible to accelerate the process in many jurisdictions if a faster turnaround is required (in some cases to less than a year).

Since inventions can still be commercialised while a patent application is pending, many applicants are happy for their application to follow the usual timescale to spread the cost.  That said, accelerated processing may be advantageous if you wish to take action against a known infringer or are relying on a granted patent to help attract investment for your business.

Since patents are territorial rights, foreign patent applications will be necessary if protection is required beyond the UK.  After filing a UK patent application, there is a 12-month period to file applications in other countries or regions (e.g. US, China, Europe), each with their own costs.

A common alternative is to file an international (PCT) application at 12 months.  Whilst this does not result in a global patent, it does buy an additional 18-19 months to assess and commercialise the technology before deciding whether to incur higher costs on foreign applications.

Once foreign applications have been filed in the territories of commercial interest, they are examined separately by the respective patent offices in each jurisdiction.

Is it important to understand the full cost of patenting an invention, and how those costs are incurred over time, so that you can budget accordingly.  The estimates provided in this table outline typical* patent costs for a single patent family over a five-year period.

*Please note that these figures are average ballpark estimates (excluding VAT) and the actual costs and timescale will vary.  In addition, renewal fees and European validation costs have not been included.