Key Takeaways

  • A patent grants the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing an invention—not an automatic right to practice it.
  • The core answer to “which of the following rights is given to the holder of a patent?” is the right to exclude.
  • Improper inventorship or disputes over patent ownership can prevent a patent from being granted.
  • Public disclosure, lack of novelty, obviousness, or incomplete claims can also bar issuance.
  • Misunderstanding the scope of claims or prior infringement may expose applicants to legal risks.
  • Universities, companies, and government employers may claim patent ownership if rights are assigned by law or contract.

What can prevent a patent from being granted? This is a question that many people ask when they're filing for patent protections. Unfortunately, your patent application might be denied for several reasons, including disclosing your invention without claiming a priority date and failing to provide the required information in your application.

U.S. Patent Law and Patent Rights

When the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issues a patent, the patent holder is granted exclusive rights to their patent. With these rights in place, the patent holder will be able to limit access to their invention, including:

  • Preventing others from using their invention.
  • Stopping others from making their invention.
  • Prohibiting the unauthorized sale of their invention.

A mistake that many people make is assuming that patents give the patent holder the right to produce their invention. This is not the case. Only the right to exclude is granted by a patent. Several factors could prevent you from manufacturing your own invention, including laws related to your invention and the rights of other people.

Other people can make your invention, but only after you have provided authorization. Typically, you would use a patent license agreement to allow another person to manufacture or use your invention.

Clarifying the Rights Granted by a Patent

When considering the question “which of the following rights is given to the holder of a patent?” it is important to note that a patent does not grant the right to make or sell an invention. Instead, the patent provides a negative right—the ability to prevent others from making, using, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention without permission.

This distinction means a patent holder could, in some cases, be blocked from commercializing their invention if another party holds an overlapping patent. For example, if you patent a drug delivery method but the drug itself is patented by someone else, you cannot sell the final product without a license.

The patent system is designed to balance incentives: rewarding inventors with exclusivity while ensuring eventual public access after the patent expires.

Patents and Infringement

Infringement is one of the issues that could possibly prevent your patent from being granted. When a patent is infringed upon, it means that the patent holder's rights to exclude have been violated. This can mean that someone is using, selling, importing, or producing an invention without the patent owner's express permission.

If you file a patent application, and the claims you make in your application infringe on the claims of a previously granted patent, then your patent will almost certainly not be granted. In most cases, there will be multiple claims in a single patent, and infringement of one claim constitutes infringement of the entire patent.

Infringement, in addition to preventing your patent from being granted, may result in you being sued by the patent owner. If the patent owner wins the infringement lawsuit, they may ask for both an injunction and monetary damages.

Inventorship, Ownership, and Validity Issues

Another common barrier to a granted patent is improper inventorship or ownership disputes. U.S. patent law requires that all true inventors be named. If someone who contributed to the conception of the invention is left out—or if a listed inventor did not actually contribute—your patent can be challenged and potentially invalidated.

Ownership also plays a role. Inventors often assign their patent rights to an employer, research institution, or company. A dispute about whether the correct party owns the rights can delay or prevent patent issuance. For example:

  • Employees and universities: In many employment or university settings, agreements specify that inventions developed using company or institutional resources belong to the employer or school.
  • Government employees: Federal rules may assign ownership of certain inventions to the U.S. government.

To avoid complications, inventorship must be carefully determined at the time of filing, and assignments should be executed properly.

Grant Proposals and Patent Protections

Another issue that can prevent your patent from being granted involves the priority date of your patent. If you fail to establish a priority filing date before publicly disclosing your invention, you will lose your non-U. S. patent rights. If your invention has been disclosed in a publication over a year before you have filed your United States patent application, your patent will generally not be granted.

For an invention to be patentable, it needs to be novel, and one part of novelty is that the invention has not yet been published. A former exception to this rule is if you have disclosed your invention to receive a grant from a university. At one time, grant proposals were not considered publications for the purposes of disclosing inventions. The reason for this is that in the past, the general public usually did not have access to grant proposals.

This view was changed by the ruling in the federal court case known as DuPont v. Cetus. In this case, an invention was disclosed in an NSF grant proposal. The court ruled that the proposal was accessible to interested parties, which means that the invention was publicly disclosed. Disclosure of the invention in the NSF grant proposal occurred more than a year before the patent application was filed, resulting in the patent not being approved.

If you're considering filing a grant proposal, you should be aware that disclosing your invention in this proposal may result in you losing the ability to patent your invention if the proposal is publicly available. Additionally, even if you don't have any research data, predicting an invention in a grant proposal may prevent you from patenting your invention if your prediction turns out to be correct.

When you're writing your grant proposal, you should refrain from making firm predictions as to what the results of your research data may be. You should also avoid fully disclosing the existing technologies upon which your invention is based. Hopefully, taking these protections will prevent you from losing your invention patentability by submitting your grant proposal.

Additional Grounds for Patent Rejection

Beyond grant proposal disclosures, other grounds can prevent a patent from being granted:

  • Lack of novelty: If the invention is already publicly known or described in prior art, the USPTO will reject it.
  • Obviousness: Even if no single prior reference discloses the invention, if the combination of references makes it an obvious step, the patent can be denied.
  • Non-patentable subject matter: Laws of nature, abstract ideas, and natural phenomena cannot be patented.
  • Insufficient disclosure: The application must fully describe the invention and enable someone skilled in the field to reproduce it.
  • Claim drafting errors: Vague or overly broad claims may be rejected or require narrowing.

Applicants should also understand that patent rights are territorial. Even if granted in the U.S., those rights do not extend internationally unless separate applications are filed in other jurisdictions.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Which of the following rights is given to the holder of a patent?
    The right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the invention—not the automatic right to practice it.
  2. Can a patent be denied if I forget to name a co-inventor?
    Yes. Failing to correctly identify inventors can result in rejection or later invalidation.
  3. What is the difference between patent inventorship and ownership?
    Inventorship is about who conceived the invention. Ownership can be assigned by contract or law, often to employers or institutions.
  4. Does a U.S. patent protect my invention worldwide?
    No. Patent rights are territorial. You must file in each country or use treaties like the PCT to seek broader protection.
  5. What are the most common reasons a patent is rejected?
    Public disclosure, lack of novelty, obviousness, improper inventorship, insufficient disclosure, or claiming non-patentable subject matter.

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