Patent

Patent, in law, governmental grant of the exclusive right to make, use, or sell an invention or grant others that right. In the United States a patent is valid for 17 years and may be requested to cover any useful and original device or process. The term derives from the medieval “letters patent”—public letters by which a sovereign conferred monopolistic control of certain goods on a subject. The first patent legislation in the United States was passed in 1790; the U. S. Patent Office was established in 1836.