patent
n. countablen. an official document that gives an inventor the only right to make, use, or sell their invention for a set period of time. This legal protection stops other people from copying the idea without permission.
n. a government-issued right granting an inventor the exclusive authority to make, use, or sell an invention for a fixed period. It legally prevents others from commercially exploiting the invention without the patent holder's consent.
The inventor files a patent for her new device.
The pharmaceutical company holds the patent on the new drug, preventing others from making it for twenty years.
To avoid infringing on the existing patent, the engineers had to design a completely novel mechanism that achieved the same result through a different process.
The noun is derived from Middle English patent (“document granting an office, property, right, title, etc.; document granting permission, licence; papal indulgence, pardon”) [and other forms], which is either: * a clipping of lettre patent, lettres patente, lettres patentes [and other forms]; or * directly from Anglo-Norman and Middle French patente (modern French patent), a clipping of Anglo-Norman lettres patentes, Middle French lettres patentes, lettre patente, and Old French patentes lettres (“document granting an office, privilege, right, etc., or making a decree”) (compare Late Latin patēns, littera patēns, litterae patentēs). For the derivation of Anglo-Norman and Middle French patente (adjective) in lettre patente, see etymology 2 below. The verb is derived from the noun.
From Middle English patent, patente (“wide open; clear, unobstructed; unlimited; of a document: available for public inspection”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman and Middle French patent (modern French patent), and directly from their etymon Latin patēns (“open; accessible, passable; evident, manifest; exposed, vulnerable”), the present active participle of pateō (“to be open; to be accessible, attainable; to be exposed, vulnerable; of frontiers or land: to extent, increase”), from Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- (“to spread out; to fly”).
Commonly collocates with verbs like 'file for', 'grant', 'hold', or 'infringe'. It takes the preposition 'on' or 'for' to specify the invention.