Patents   Patents are territorial rights, and a patent gives you the right to stop others from manufacturing, using, importing or selling your patented invention. Thus, unless already existing patent rights or legal regulations hinder you, a patent gives you an exclusive right to exploit your invention commercially for a limited period (usually 20 years from filing date).   A patent can be obtained if you have a practical solution to a technical problem, i.e. for products or processes that possess or contain new functional or technical aspects, provided that the invention fulfils certain requirements.   The three main requirements for a patentable invention are novelty, inventiveness and industrial applicability.   Novelty means that the invention must be different from already available ideas, inventions or products, also referred to as “prior art”. This does not mean that every aspect of an invention must be novel (e.g. new uses of known processes, machines, compositions of matter and materials are patentable, and this may also be the case for incremental improvements on known processes). Furthermore, your invention must not have been publicly disclosed in any way in any country in the world.   Inventiveness means that the invention must contain an inventive step, i.e. the invention must be regarded as non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art. Non-obviousness usually is demonstrated by showing that practicing the invention yields surprising, unexpected results.   Industrial applicability of the invention is easy to determine and most often fulfilled.