The language of innovation, in plain words.

35 U.S.C. 102 is the section of the US Patent Act that sets the novelty condition for patentability: a person is entitled to a patent unless the claimed invention was already disclosed in the prior art it defines, subject to listed exceptions.

35 U.S.C. 103 is the US patent statute that bars a patent when the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious, before its effective filing date, to a person having ordinary skill in the art.

Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) is the application a company submits to the US FDA for the review and potential approval of a generic drug product under section 505(j) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 355(j)).

Best mode is the requirement in 35 U.S.C. 112(a) that a US patent specification set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.

Biotechnology patent is a patent on a biotechnological invention.

Claim chart means a table that compares each limitation of a patent claim with an accused product or with an item of prior art, showing specifically where and how each limitation is found.

Claim construction is the process of deciding what the words of a patent claim mean, and so what the claim covers.

Compulsory license is an authorization by a government for someone else to produce a patented product or use a patented process without the consent of the patent owner.

Continuation application is a US patent application for the invention or inventions disclosed in an earlier, copending application.

Continuation-in-part application (CIP) is a US application filed during the lifetime of a prior-filed application that repeats some substantial portion or all of it and adds matter not disclosed in it.

Contributory infringement is a form of indirect patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(c), in which a party supplies a component or material especially made or adapted for use in an infringement of a patent.

Dependent claim is a patent claim that refers to an earlier claim and then adds a further limitation.

Design around is the practice of changing a product or process so that it avoids infringing a patent owned by someone else.

Design patent is, in the United States, a patent for a new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture (35 U.S.C. 171).

Divisional application is a new patent application split out of an earlier (parent) application, which keeps the date of the parent application and the benefit of any priority right.

Doctrine of equivalents is a rule of patent infringement under which an accused product or process that is not identical to a claimed element can still infringe if it contains an equivalent of that element.

Double patenting is the grant of a second patent that claims the same invention as an earlier patent of the same applicant or, under US law, also an obvious variant of a claim in a patent or application with a common inventor or owner.

Enablement is the patent law requirement that the specification teach a person skilled in the art how to make and use the claimed invention.

European patent is a patent granted under the European Patent Convention (EPC).

Federal Circuit is the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a federal appeals court with nationwide jurisdiction over appeals in specialized cases, such as those involving patent laws.

FRAND means fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory.

Freedom to operate (FTO) is the ability to make, use, sell or import a product without infringing other parties' patents.

Gene patent is a patent whose claims cover a gene, a DNA sequence or a genetic invention such as cDNA.

Grace period means a period before a patent application is filed during which certain earlier disclosures of the invention do not count against its novelty.

Indefiniteness is the defect of a patent claim whose boundaries are not clear.

Industrial design here means the intellectual property right in the ornamental aspect of an article, not the profession or discipline of design.

Information disclosure statement (IDS) is a list of patents, publications, applications and other information that an applicant submits in a US patent application for the USPTO to consider, in the form 37 CFR 1.98 requires.

Intangible assets are identifiable non-monetary assets without physical substance.

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, and symbols, names and images used in commerce.

Inter partes review (IPR) is a US Patent Trial and Appeal Board trial in which a third party asks to cancel patent claims as unpatentable, only on a ground under 35 U.S.C. 102 or 103 and only on patents or printed publications.

Invalidity search, also called a validity search, is a search done after a patent is granted for any publication (prior art) that can be used to prove that one or more claims of the patent are invalid.

Invention assignment agreement is an agreement, or a clause in an employment agreement, under which a person such as an employee assigns or agrees to assign rights in inventions to another, such as an employer.

Invention disclosure is an internal document in which researchers or engineers describe a potentially patentable invention to their organization.

Inventive step is the patentability requirement that an invention must not be obvious to a person skilled in the art, having regard to the state of the art.

Inventorship is the question of which individuals are the inventor or joint inventors of a claimed invention.

IP company is an informal term for a company whose main assets or business are intellectual property.

Litigation funding, also called third-party litigation financing, is an arrangement in which a funder that is not a party to a lawsuit provides funding to a litigant or law firm in exchange for an interest in the potential recovery.

Lost profits are, in US patent law, damages that compensate a patent owner for the profits it would have made if the infringement had not occurred, recovered as part of the damages adequate to compensate for infringement under 35 U.S.C. 284.

Markush claim is a patent claim that recites a list of alternatively usable members, for example a material "selected from the group consisting of A, B, and C".

Means-plus-function is a US claim format in which an element of a combination is expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function, without reciting structure, material or acts.

National phase is the stage of the PCT procedure in which an international application is processed by each designated or elected national or regional Office.

New matter is content added to a patent application after its filing date that the application as filed did not describe.

Non-patent literature (NPL) is published material other than patent documents that can serve as prior art.

Non-practicing entity (NPE) is a term for an entity that owns patents but does not make products.

Novelty (patent law) is the patentability requirement that a claimed invention must not already form part of the prior art: what was made available to the public before the relevant filing or priority date.

Office action (OA) is written correspondence from a patent examiner that requires a written response from the applicant for prosecution to continue.

Opposition search is a search for prior art and other evidence to support an opposition: a procedure, generally conducted before the patent office rather than a court, in which a party challenges the grant of a patent within a period set by law.

Orange Book is the common name of the FDA publication Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations.

Paragraph IV certification is a statement in a US generic drug application that a patent claiming the brand drug is invalid or will not be infringed by the generic product.

Paris Convention is the international treaty, adopted in 1883, that applies to industrial property in the widest sense, including patents, trademarks, industrial designs and utility models.

Patent means an exclusive right granted for an invention.

Patent assignee is the party that holds, by assignment, all or part of the right, title and interest in a patent or patent application, ordinarily a company or other organization rather than the inventor.

Patent assignment is the transfer of ownership of a patent or patent application from one party to another.

Patent attorney is a professional authorized to prepare and prosecute patent applications for others before a patent office.

Patent bar is the USPTO's term for admission to practice before the Office in patent matters.

Patent citation is a reference, on a patent document or in its search report, to prior art that an examiner or an applicant considers relevant to the invention.

Patent claim is one of the numbered sentences at the end of a patent or patent application that define the matter for which protection is sought.

Patent classification is a system for organizing patent documents into technology groupings based on common subject matter, each grouping identified by a symbol.

Patent cliff is a term used, mainly in the pharmaceutical industry, for a period when patents on many high-revenue branded drugs expire within a short time, and for the revenue loss that follows as those drugs face generic competition.

Patent costs are the fees and expenses of obtaining and keeping a patent: the official fees that each patent office charges at each stage, plus any professional fees if an attorney or agent is hired.

Patent disclosure is the information about an invention that an application must set out for the public in return for exclusive patent rights.

Patent drawings are the figures filed with a patent application to illustrate the invention.

Patent eligibility is the threshold question whether a claimed invention is the kind of subject matter that can be patented at all.

Patent examiner is the patent office official who examines patent applications to decide whether a patent can be granted.

Patent exhaustion is the rule that a patent owner's rights in a particular product end once that product has been sold, or placed on the market, with the owner's authority.

Patent expiration is the end of a patent's term.

Patent family is a collection of patent applications covering the same or similar technical content, related to each other through priority claims.

Patent infringement is the exercise of a patent owner's exclusive rights without authority.

Patent landscape is an overview of the patenting activity and trends in a field of technology, usually presented as a patent landscape report (PLR) that answers specific policy or practical questions and presents complex information in a clear and accessible way.

Patent licensing is the practice of a patent owner (the licensor) giving another party (the licensee) permission to use the patented invention, while the owner keeps ownership of the patent.

Patent litigation is a court action involving the validity or infringement of a patent.

Patent maintenance fees are fees paid periodically to keep a patent, and in some systems a pending application, in force.

Patent management is the work of managing a company's patents across their life: deciding what to file, prosecuting applications, paying maintenance or renewal fees, reviewing which patents to keep, and using patents through licensing or enforcement.

Patent marking is the practice of giving notice to the public that an article is patented.

Patent pending is a notice, also written "patent applied for", that a patent application has been filed for the invention in a product.

Patent pool is an arrangement in which two or more parties assemble a package of technology that is licensed to the contributors to the pool and to third parties.

Patent portfolio is a collection of patents, and potentially other IP rights, owned by the same owner.

Patent prosecution is the process of pursuing a patent application before a patent office, from filing until the office grants a patent, or the application is refused, withdrawn or abandoned.

Patent search is a search of patent documents, and often non-patent literature, to answer a defined question: what is known in a field, whether an invention is new, whether a product may infringe in-force patents, or whether a granted patent is valid.

Patent term adjustment (PTA) is additional term given to a US patent when its issue is delayed by the USPTO missing statutory time limits, or by derivation proceedings, secrecy orders or successful appeals.

Patent term extension (PTE) is an extension of the term of a US patent under 35 U.S.C. 156, restoring part of the time lost while the patented product awaited premarket regulatory approval.

Patent territoriality means that a patent has legal effect only in the country or region where it was granted.

Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is a tribunal within the USPTO that reviews examiners' rejections in proceedings called ex parte appeals, and decides patentability questions for issued patents raised by third parties in AIA trials.

Patent valuation is the process of determining a monetary value for a patent.

Patentability search is a search for prior art relevant to a defined invention, done while preparing and before filing a patent application, to evaluate whether the invention is new and non-obvious.

Patented product is a product that falls within the scope of a patent's claims, so that making, using, selling or importing it without the owner's authority can infringe the patent.

PCT application is an international patent application filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which lets an applicant seek protection in a large number of countries at once instead of filing separate national or regional applications.

Plant patent is a US patent granted under 35 U.S.C. 161 to whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces a distinct and new variety of plant.

Post-grant review (PGR) is a US Patent and Trademark Office trial in which someone other than the patent owner may ask to cancel claims on any ground under 35 U.S.C. 282(b)(2) or (3).

Prior art is everything made available to the public before the relevant filing date, by any means, that can help decide whether a claimed invention is new and involves an inventive step (is not obvious).

Priority date is the filing date of the earliest application whose priority is claimed in a later application, or the later application's own filing date if no priority is claimed.

Prosecution history estoppel is a US limit on the doctrine of equivalents: when a patentee responds to a rejection by narrowing the claims, the prosecution history estops the patentee from later arguing that the subject matter covered by the original, broader claim was nothing more than an equivalent.

Provisional patent application is a US national application filed under 35 U.S.C. 111(b).

Purple Book is FDA's database of licensed biological products.

Reasonable royalty is, in US patent law, the floor for damages in an infringement case: 35 U.S.C. 284 requires damages adequate to compensate for the infringement, but in no event less than a reasonable royalty for the use made of the invention by the infringer.

Reexamination is a US Patent and Trademark Office procedure in which the Office re-examines claims of an issued patent.

Request for continued examination (RCE) is a US procedure under which an applicant may obtain continued examination of an application in which prosecution is closed, by filing a submission and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e).

Section 337 investigation is an unfair import investigation conducted by the US International Trade Commission (USITC) under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, codified at 19 U.S.C. 1337.

Standard essential patent (SEP) is a patent that protects technology essential to a technical standard.

State of the art search is a broad search of patent and non-patent literature in a defined technological field.

Supplementary protection certificate (SPC) is an intellectual property right under EU law that serves as an extension to a patent right for specific authorized pharmaceutical and plant protection products.

Technology transfer is a collaborative process that lets scientific findings, knowledge and intellectual property flow from creators, such as universities and research institutions, to public and private users.

Terminal disclaimer is a statement in which a patentee or applicant disclaims or dedicates to the public the entire term, or any terminal part of the term, of a patent or of a patent to be granted.

Trade dress is the overall look of a product or its packaging, or of the setting in which a service is offered, protected in US law as a trademark when it identifies source.

Trade secret is information that has value because it is kept secret and that its holder protects with reasonable steps to keep it secret.

Unified Patent Court (UPC) is a court common to the Contracting Member States of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, established to settle disputes relating to European patents and European patents with unitary effect.

Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is the international agreement, signed on 19 February 2013, that establishes the Unified Patent Court for disputes relating to European patents and European patents with unitary effect.

Unitary patent is a European patent granted by the EPO to which unitary effect has been registered, so that it has a unitary character and provides uniform protection with equal effect in the participating EU Member States it covers.

US patent application is a written application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a patent, made or authorized by the inventor, except as otherwise provided in title 35.

Utility model is a patent-like right for technical inventions, available in some countries, with a shorter term and usually less stringent requirements than a patent.

Utility patent is the US patent type that may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers a new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement of these.

Willful infringement is, in US patent law, deliberate or intentional infringement of a patent.

Written description requirement is the rule in 35 U.S.C. 112(a) that the specification must contain a written description of the invention.