Patents

Patents protect inventions: new products, machines or processes. A patent gives the inventor the right to stop others making, using or selling the invention without permission, for up to 20 years. In return, the inventor shares how it works, so patents are a trade-off.

What an invention must be

To get a patent, an invention must be:

• New – it must never have been described publicly anywhere in the world, even in a blog post.
• Inventive – it must solve a problem in a clever, non-obvious way; a small tweak, like a 2 mm thicker phone case, is not enough.
• Something made or used – a device, a substance or an industrial process; an idea alone is not an invention.

A bike lock that texts you when its cable is cut could be patented: it is new, inventive and a real product. Just saying "bike locks should send alerts" protects nothing.

What cannot be patented

These cannot be patented:

• Creative works: books, plays, scripts, music and artwork are protected by copyright instead.
• Medical treatments and diagnosis: you cannot patent treating or diagnosing a patient.
• Scientific theories and discoveries: you cannot patent a discovery.
• The presentation of information: a chart or form layout is not patentable.
• Non-technical software: an app that just stores a shopping list is not patentable.

Software with a technical effect may be patentable: a program that compresses video to save storage does something technical.

Ideas and formats

An idea cannot be protected by copyright or by a patent. Copyright protects the finished expression of an idea, such as the actual script or the recorded song, not the concept behind it. Trying to protect an idea or a whole format is a grey area in law: an idea alone cannot be protected, but formats are made of many separate parts that may be protected.

Individual creative parts of a format can be protected by copyright – for example, an original theme tune or a written rulebook. Whether the overall format can be protected is less certain: it may be possible if its distinctive media components create a whole format, but this is hard to prove. Keep dated records of each part.