Patent transactions and management

This document provides an overview of the Practice Notes, Precedents and Checklists contained in the Patent transactions and management subtopic. For information about the contents of the Patent disputes subtopic, see: Patent disputes—overview.

What is a patent?

A patent protects new inventions and may cover aspects such as how things work, what they are made of and how they are made—ie patents can claim protection for novel products and processes. Patents do not cover information or what things look like, which might instead be protected by trade marks, copyright or design rights.

Patents are complex legal documents. They have two main parts:

•
the specification—this is a detailed description of how the invention works, usually accompanied by some diagrams to explain it in more detail
•
the claims—these are numbered paragraphs which set out the scope of the invention

For more information, see Practice Notes:

•
Introduction to patents
•
Major types of patent claims

Applying for a patent

There are two types of patents available in the UK:

•
national patents—these are granted by the UK Patent Office under the Patents Act 1977 (PA

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