Timing! Your own actions in developing and/or promoting your invention can prevent you from obtaining a patent covering your invention unless you have a patent application on file.

To protect your patent rights in the United States and abroad, you must have a patent application on file prior to any public disclosure or public use of an invention for which you would like patent protection. If you are about to publicly disclose or use your invention, you should immediately file a patent application.

If you publicly used or disclosed your invention prior to filing a patent application, it is unlikely you will be able to get patent protection for your invention outside the United States.

For patent protection inside the United States, you must not have publicly disclosed the invention, publicly used the invention, or offered the invention for sale more than one year prior to filing your patent application. If the first anniversary of your first public disclosure, public use, or offer for sale is approaching, you must file a patent application before that anniversary to obtain patent protection for your invention inside the United States.

If you have not publicly disclosed or publicly used your invention yet, do not do so until you have filed a patent application for that invention. A non-disclosure agreement can enable you to disclose your invention to limited parties without such a disclosure being public. However, you should be aware that anyone who violates such a non-disclosure agreement can be determined to have made a public disclosure, thereby potentially preventing you from obtaining patent protection for the invention.

Novelty. The invention must not have been publicly described or publicly used by anyone before you made your invention or more than one year prior to filing your patent application. Note that any publication counts -- not just U.S. patents.

Non-obviousness. The invention must not be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains at the time the invention was made.

Utility. The invention must be useful and not for immoral purposes. Just about any invention can meet the utility requirement. To quote a famous case by the U.S. Supreme Court, patents can cover "anything under the sun made by man." Recently, some believed that computer software and methods of conducting business were exclusions to this broad classification of eligible subject matter for patents; however, recent clarifications of the law have shown that no such exclusions exist.

Disclosure of the invention in the patent. To obtain a patent, the inventor(s) must describe the invention in sufficient detail and clarity that one of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains can both make and use the invention from the description. In addition, the inventor(s) must disclose the best mode contemplated for practicing the invention.