What is a Patent?

What is a patent?

A patent is the process of registering and protecting an invention or improvement through the competent state authority.

For an invention, the registration issued in the inventor's name gives the inventor the legal right to block other parties, for a defined period, from producing, marketing, or profiting from the registered invention without the inventor's consent. A registered invention becomes the inventor's private property in much the same way as a saleable or leasable product. Registered inventions establish proprietary rights at country level. A registration obtained in Turkey grants rights only within Turkey, and gives the holder the right to stop imports of infringing products into Turkey.

Criteria for patent registration

• Novelty: The invention has to introduce a technical advance that is not part of the state of the art. The state of the art includes all information that has been made available to the public before the application date, by any means anywhere in the world.
• Inventive step: The invention must not be obvious to an expert in the relevant technical field, given the state of the art. If an expert would not easily derive the invention from current knowledge, the inventive step is accepted.
• Industrial applicability: The invention has to be manufacturable or usable in any branch of industry, including agriculture. If the invention can be produced or applied, its industrial applicability is accepted.

Inventions that cannot be registered

• Rules and schemes for intellectual, commercial, or gaming activities
• Scientific theories, discoveries, and mathematical methods
• Non-technical methods for collecting, presenting, or transmitting information
• Diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical methods applied to the human or animal body
• Inventions contrary to public order or general morality
• Plant or animal varieties, or essentially biological methods of breeding plants and animals
• The patent system is an effective incentive tool. It encourages technical and inventive talent toward invention, and business people toward applying inventions in industry. Registered patents are a leading driver of research and development and a primary route for technical knowledge to spread. With the protection it provides, the patent system plays a real and productive role in expanding manufacturing across many sectors.