In an increasingly technology‐driven economy, the need for new products with inventive ideas and novel concepts are essentially felt by the individuals of a society. If you are a person with such an idea or concept that solves a technical problem in an unexpectedly new or better way then patenting it would be the appropriate practice in order to protect such creative idea, concept or knowledge by converting it into a proprietary technical advantage.

This process of patenting is governed by a Patent system incorporated by the national governments. An ideal Patent system deals with the provisions relating to Inventions, what could be termed as an invention, procedure to register an invention as a patent, rights granted to the patentees, term of protection, secrecy provisions, provisions relating to licensing and assignments, constitution and governance of regulatory authority and penalties and remedies for the purpose of Infringement of the rights.

Under the patents system, a government may grant an inventor a patent for a new invention. The patent gives the owner of the patent an exclusive right to exploit the invention by way of excluding others from making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the invention without the patent owner’s consent. This right is territorial in nature, i.e. country specific and lasts for a limited period, generally a maximum of 20 years.

This is only one half of the patent system however. In return for the grant of an exclusive right, the patent system requires the inventor to provide a full description of how the invention works, and this description is published, making the invention available to the public. Thus for both the inventor and the public there is a cost and a benefit – the inventor has the benefit of a monopoly for a limited time; and the public has the benefit of having access to the details of the new technology.