What Rights Does A Patent Grant

The grant confers “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” and its territories and possessions for which the term of the patent shall be 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or (if the application contains a specific reference to an earlier filed patent application) from the date of the earliest such application was filed. However, you have to pay your maintenance fees.

Patent law can be tricky, the key is in the words “right to exclude“. The patent does not grant the right to make, use, offer for sale or sell or import the invention but only grants the exclusive nature of the right. Any person is ordinarily free to make, use, offer for sale or sell or import anything he/she pleases, and a grant from the US Government is not necessary. The patent only grants the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale or selling or importing the invention.

Since the patent does not grant the right to make, use, offer for sale, or sell, or import the invention, the patentee’s own right to do so is dependent upon the rights of others and whatever general laws might be applicable.