A U.S. patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. To get a U.S. patent, an application must be filed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Filing Patents
The initial phase of the process of transferring inventions from the laboratory to industry and the public is invention recognition and disclosure. Invention recognition or identification is the single most important step in the invention based technology transfer process, and can often be accomplished by the simple application of two questions; namely, "Is the discovery new?" and "Is the discovery or finding useful?" When an investigator obtains a positive answer to both of these questions, disclosure to the appropriate institutional administrator responsible for handling inventions or intellectual property is clearly indicated.

Patent Information
When should investigators invoke these two questions? Earlier is nearly always better than later. The optimal times to ask the questions - "Is it new?" and "Is it useful?" - are each time an experiment or line of inquiry has been completed. Other critical periods are during the preparation of manuscripts, presentations and proposals. The submission of a manuscript represents a late, but obvious event that should also trigger invention recognition. Asking these questions after public disclosure of a discovery or invention in the form of an oral presentation, an article, an abstract, a poster session, or a thesis or dissertation may be too late.