US patent office

•    Wider context for the US patent office
The US Patent Office exists within the larger organizational context of, and can be more correctly and applicably noted as, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As the name implies, the overall agency as might be informally referred to as the US patent office also provides for the ability to register trademarks for rights holders and thereby toward providing for additional functions related to U.S. commerce and innovation.

•    Legal empowerment of US patent office
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 provided for the legal functions exercised by the US patent office in terms of giving Congress the ability to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to inventors the exclusive rights to their respective discoveries.” As such, Congress passed the Patent Act in 1790, providing for the functions now exercised by the US patent office. This language can be found in Title 35 of the United States Code (U.S.C.).

•    Location for US patent office
The headquarters for the US patent office can be located in the USPTO facilities in Alexandria, Virginia, where the agency has been located since 2006. Previous to this point, the US patent office was headquartered out of offices based in Arlington, Virginia.

•    Rights provided by US patent office
The US patent office will provide, based on its decision to furnish intellectual property rights of these kinds to applicants, a term of 20 years for such rights to be maintained, after which the patented invention will lapse into the public domain. Moreover, the rights provided by the US patent office are understood, in the terms maintained by US legal theory, as being in a negative form and accordingly providing for the ability to prevent others from using an invention in an unapproved manner.

•    Process administered by US patent office
The US patent office maintains a regular procedure through which people can apply for patent protection rights. In general, patent rights are provided in the specific form of utility patents, and less commonly through the forms of design and plant patents. The eligibility requirements maintained by the US patent office for the main form of utility patents can be noted as including:

o    Patentable subject matter:
Section 101 of Title 35 of the United States Code refers to the kinds of items which will be considered patentable inventions by the US patent office. These include ideas for manufactures, machines, compositions of matter, and processes, any of which may also be applicable toward improvements designed for such items.

o    Utility:
The aforementioned U.S.C. section also explains how the element of utility can be proved in a patentable invention.

o    Novelty:
Title 35, U.S.C. Section 102 defines the required novelty of inventions as consisting not just of the invention’s newness, but also of the limited term of time for which it could have been publicly known and in use previous to the application filing. 
o    Non-obviousness:
The Patent Act of 1952 precludes inventions based on a merely “ordinary skill in the art.”
o    Enablement:
The invention must be specified or disclosed.