patent system
6
3.9
- noun
- /ˈpætənt ˈsɪstəm/
- Specialized
:
sistema de patentes
- The America Invents Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law on Sept. 16, dramatically alters the nation's patent system.
- the British patent system
Examples
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The Constitution permits Congress to establish a patent system but doesn't require it.
Blog text (1) -
High prices are a direct result of the reliance on the market monopoly granted by the patent system for the financing of R&D.
Academic text (2016) -
And that would have changed not just the patent system, but our lives.
Blog text (31) -
There is widespread agreement that the existing software patent system is a mess.
Blog text (12) -
The act will dramatically change another aspect of the patent system.
Academic text (2011) -
Bottomley challenges a particular historical view of the development of the British patent system.
Academic text (2016) -
In the event of success, the patent system provides protection allowing those costs to be recouped.
Blog text (23) -
Moreover, patent experts maintain that the United States needs a strong, unified patent system in order to promote innovation.
Academic text (2007) -
Abraham Lincoln, with his usual elegant phrasing and insight, described the essence of the U.S. patent system in 1859.
Academic text (1997) -
The patent system encourages inventors to create new technologies by granting them exclusive rights to their innovations.
Synonyms
5
4.9
Rules about who owns and can use an invention
How Protective
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a legal framework for granting and protecting patents' is directly and compositionally derived from combining 'patent' (an exclusive right/document for an invention) with 'system' (a formal set of rules or procedures). The noun + system pattern signals an organized domain relating to the first noun and is cross-linguistically common, so a learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Patent system comes from old 'letters patent'. The word patent meant an open paper from a king that said one person could use or sell an invention alone, so others could not copy it. That's why today a patent system is the law that gives inventors 'exclusive rights' for a time.