Reduction to practice

Cross-referenced

Conception

The mental part of invention: forming a definite and permanent idea of the complete invention in enough detail that a skilled person could build it. Conception, paired with reduction to practice, determines who legally counts as an inventor.

Cross-referenced

Patent

A government-granted right that gives an inventor the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or importing a patented invention within the country that granted the patent, for a limited time. A patent does not give the owner the right to practice the invention — only the right to exclude others. The US issues three types: utility, design, and plant patents.

Reasonable royalty

The floor for money damages in an infringement case: the royalty the infringer would have agreed to pay in a hypothetical negotiation at the time infringement began. It applies when the patent owner cannot prove lost profits.

Response

A written reply from a patent applicant to an office action. A response must address every rejection and objection raised by the examiner — arguing why the rejection is wrong, amending the claims to overcome the rejection, or both. Failing to respond within the deadline causes the application to go abandoned. A well-crafted response is often the difference between getting a patent and getting a final rejection.

Abstract

A brief summary (300 words or fewer) that appears at the top of every patent. The abstract describes what the invention does in general terms. Legally, it has almost no weight — courts use the claims to determine what a patent covers, not the abstract. The abstract is useful mainly for quickly scanning patents during a prior art search.

Anticipation

A legal standard for rejecting a patent claim. If every element of a claim was already disclosed in a single prior art reference — in a patent, article, or product — the claim is "anticipated" and cannot be patented. Anticipation requires a single source to contain every element; if you need two sources, it's an obviousness argument, not anticipation.