A patent is a legal document which gives inventors of new technology the exclusive right to commercially exploit the invention for the life of the patent:
Inventions which are new and provide utility in some way. These inventions must also be non-obvious. Such an invention could be a useful device or a method.
IP Australia is the Australian government agency that administers patents, trademarks and design rights. Their website is a valuable source of knowledge for general information on patents in the Australian context.
For assistance with the process of obtaining a patent for an invention it may be helpful to do the following:
The format of a patent number depends on the:
1) issuing office, 2) type of patent and 3) when it was issued.
All patent offices assign a filing or application number when they receive an application, eg AN US 80-207592.
After a patent is granted it is given a final patent number.
eg US 4,361,601.
Numbers differ according to the country of application which is also indicated by the geographic code.
For example: AN US 80-207592 indicates a publication in the United States, while JP 63,270,598 indicates a Japanese publication.
Patents can be found by searching on the following:
For information on searching for patents using SciFinder and Scopus, please consult the following PDF:
There is no such thing as an 'international patent' but you can get patents granted in a number of different countries and protect your invention.
It is important to note that an Australian patent provides protection only within Australia. If you want to apply for a patent in other countries, you can:
You can then:
Regardless of the option chosen, the inventor will need to apply for a separate patent application to each intellectual property office in every country. This way, the inventor would be granted patents in a number of different countries for the protection of the same invention.