A patent is a document giving an inventor a legal, exclusive right to make, use and sell their invention in a particular country or countries, for a given period of time (normally 20 years).
A patent is granted by a state in exchange for the 'complete' disclosure of the invention with the aim of advancing the economy. An invention does not have to be patented, an alternative is to keep the invention a 'trade secret'. For example, the recipe for Coca-Cola is a trade secret and has never been patented or disclosed. The inventor does not have to manufacture the product themselves: patent rights can be sold or licensed to others.
Many countries have gradually put their patent collections into available online databases. Patents can therefore be found by searching the national databases or the common interface Esp@cenet which contains more than 130 million patents from around the world (more than 100 countries). The database is available free of charge.
The European Patent Convention provides a legal framework for granting Europe-wide patents through an application at the European Patent Office. A single application, once granted, gives protection in all of the countries who have signed up to the treaty. For the moment 24 European countries participates, look here for more information
The Unified Patent Court (UPC) will be a court common to the Contracting Member States and thus part of their judicial system. It will have exclusive competence in respect of European patents and European patents with unitary effect.
You can find more information on the Unified Patent Court and EU's patent work on the website of the European Commission
All the documents to be found through Google Patents are from the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), EPO (the European Patent Office) and WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization). From the USPTO you can apply for patents dating back to 1790, from the EPO and from WIPO dating back to 1978. Further information on Google Patents.
A patent is a document giving an inventor a legal, exclusive right to make, use and sell their invention in a particular country or countries, for a given period of time (normally 20 years).
A utility model is similar to a patent but is faster and cheaper to obtain than a patent. It can be useful to protect minor inventions with a shorter time of protection
Patents only remain in force with payment of an annual fee. You can check the status of a patent to find out if it has been granted, expired or remains in force.
IPSUM
This is a UK Patent Office resource which allows you to check the status of UK patents/patent applications.
Immaterialret: Ophavsret, patentret, brugsmodelret, designret, varemærkeret by 
Den fælles patentdomstol - retsplejen ved Europas nye patentdomstol by 
The Oxford Handbook of Intellectual Property Law by 
Current Challenges in Patent Information Retrieval by Research activities of universities are normally published in journal articles. Commercial companies rarely publish their research in journals: if it is published at all it will normally be in a patent document. Much of the information held in patent documents never appears in journal articles. In addition to finding unique information you can use the patent literature to:
To be patentable an invention must fulfil the following criteria:
Creative works such as literary, musical or artistic works are covered by copyright not patent law. Similarly, scientific or mathematical theories and computer programs are normally protected by copyright.