Glossary
- 3rd F
- Advisor
- BA
- Balance Sheet
- BAN
- Barrier to Entry
- BP
- Business Angel
- Business Angel Network
- Business Plan
- Business Thumbnail
- Carbon Reduction Commitment
- Cash Flow Forecast
- Coach
- Conditions Precedent
- Copyright
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- CRC
- CSR
- Data Protection Act
- DD
- Director
- Disclosure Letter
- DPA
- Due Diligence
- Early-stage
- EIS
- Enterprise Investment Scheme
- Entrepreneur
- Equity
- Executive Summary
- Exit Multiple
- Expansion
- Family, Friends and Fools
- FFF
- Founder
- Gross Value Add
- GVA
- High Net Worth
- HM Revenue and Customs
- HMRC
- HNW
- IM
- Incubator
- Information Memorandum
- Intellectual Property
- Internal Rate of Return
- Investor
- Investor Ready
- IP
- IR
- IRR
- Loan
- Long Term Incentive Plan
- LTIP
- Management Buy In
- Management Buy Out
- MBI
- MBO
- Memorandum of Association
- Memorandum of Understanding
- Mentor
- MoA
- Money laundering
- MoU
- National Minimum Wage
- NED
- Neo Linguistic Programming
- NLP
- NMW
- Nomad
- Nominated Adviser
- Non-Executive Director
- Offer Letter
- Payment in Lieu of Notice
- PILON
- Positive Ratchet Clause
- Pre-start
- Preference Shares
- Principles
- Profit and Loss
- Ratchet
- Risk Premium
- Sales of Goods Act
- Shadow Director
- Shareholder Agreement
- Shares
- Small or Medium Enterprise
- SME
- SME
- SoGA
- Sophisticated Investor
- Start-up
- Sweat Equity
- Total Shareholder Return
- Trade secret
- Trademark
- TSR
- Unique Perceived Benefit
- Unique Selling Proposition
- UPB
- USP
- Warranty
- White Meeting
Patent
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.
The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention that must be new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. In many countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods, perpetual motion machines and mental acts.
The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent or exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the invention.
A person or company owning a patent may have a significant barrier to entry for any other company wishing to carry out the same business. However, enforcing the patent can be an expensive and very time consuming business.
