A patent is an intellectual property right granted for an invention, conferring on its holder a monopoly on its exploitation within a specific territory. This monopoly, which lasts for 20 years, is conditional on the regular payment of annual fees and serves as consideration for the public disclosure of the invention.
The territory covered depends on the type of patent: it may be a country, as in the case of the French patent covering France, or a region, as in the case of the European patent or the ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation) patent.
To obtain a patent and the resulting monopoly, the applicant — whether a natural or legal person — must file a patent application with the competent office. The application is then searched and examined to confirm that it meets the patentability criteria, namely:
- The invention must fall within a patentable technical field
- It must be new relative to the state of the art
- It must involve an inventive step relative to the state of the art
- It must be suitable for industrial application.