Patents are licenses which inventors apply for in order to safeguard their inventions. They grant the inventor the exclusive right to exploit their invention (WIPO, no date). Patents are protected by law under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and they allow inventors to exploit their invention for up to 20-years - usually for commercial gain. Should anyone try to use their invention without permission, the owner of the patent can sue for "infringement" and court cases can results in large monetary sums.
The UK's patent authority is the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and it manages all UK patent applications and grants patent licenses to successful applicants in the UK. Other countries have their own equivalents to the IPO, for example the U.S.A. has the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Each patent authority has it's own two character code, which is applied to the beginning of the patent number. In the UK this is "GB".
Unlike copyright, patents have to be applied for, and inventors have to prove that their invention is new. You may have seen phrases like "UK Patent pending" on some products to show a patent application is in process. Once the application is received, the patent authority does "substantive checks" to determine if the invention is new and inventive, based on the claims in the application. (.GOV.UK, 2025). If a patent application does not meet the requirements of the patent authority, it will be rejected, and applicants can either re-write their application or terminate it.
This process of applying for a patent can take some time, and even with paying the fees and replying promptly to patent authority queries it can take at least 18 months for a patent to be granted. (Mewburn Ellis, 2025a).
Once a patent is granted in the UK, the IPO will publish the patent and a patent certificate is issues to the inventor.
Patents are granted for an initial 5-years, after which patent holders are required to renew their patents annually. Inventors can renew a patent for up to another 15-years. This means an inventor has at most 20-years in which to exploit their invention for commercial gain. After 20-years, the invention transfers to the public domain, and is no longer protected.
Patents are valid in the country where the patent authority operates. However there are various international agreements which allow the extension of Intellectual Property rights into other countries. For example, the UK has a variety of agreements with other countries granting UK patent holders rights in other countries. There maybe some local formalities to be completed to grant these extensions (.GOV.UK, 2024).
A bit like in copyright law - where the author/creator of a work may not be the actual copyright holder - Inventors may not be the patent owner. It is the patent owner (sometimes called the Assignee) who owns the rights to exploit the invention and make money from it. By default the initial owner of a patent is the inventor, however, most inventors work for companies and they will have clauses in their employment contracts which specifies any intellectual property they generate during their employment will become the property of the company. (Mewburn Ellis, 2025b).
Patents can be for very specific pieces of technology, and you may find that one product incorporates the intellectual property from several patents. For example, think of all the components used to construct a car - the windscreen wipers, the suspension, the steering mechanism, the materials the car is made from, the tires, the engine - that one car may have hundreds of patents pieces of technology within it. Nissan Motor has over 60,000 patents in it's portfolio1.
Once you have a patent you have a choice how to use it. You can exploit it yourself, or you can licence your invention to others so they can create a product to sell. In addition, patents can be treated as commodities, and can be bought and sold, and in some cases companies have been bought by other companies in order to acquire their patent portfolios.
If someone uses the technology from a current patent without permission, it is deemed an infringement of the patent, and they can be sued. Court cases can drag out for years, and the monetary fines if found guilty can be substantial. It is therefore important not to infringe a patent.
.GOV.UK (2024) Extension of UK Intellectual property rights abroad. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/extension-of-uk-intellectual-property-rights-abroad (Accessed: 10 January 2025).
.GOV.UK (2025) Apply for a patent. Available at : https://www.gov.uk/patent-your-invention/after-you-apply (Accessed 10 January 2025).
Mewburn Ellis (2025a) UK patents - The Basics. Available at : https://www.mewburn.com/law-practice-library/uk-patents-the-basics (Accessed 10 January 2025).
Mewburn Ellis (2025a) Inventorship and Ownership. Available at : https://www.mewburn.com/law-practice-library/inventorship-and-ownership (Accessed 10 January 2025).
WIPO (no date) Patent. Available at: https://www.wipo.int/web/patents (Accessed 21 October 2024).
1 Figure derived from a search on Google Patents using this search string : assignee:(Nissan Motor) before:priority:20250110 after:priority:20040110 status:GRANT type:PATENT and conducted on 10th January 2025.
Liane Frydland
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