A patent is a government granted exclusive right to make, construct and use a new invention. The purpose of issuing patents to inventors is to create an incentive in the form of an exclusive right. The patent system motivates inventors to innovate, to create better technologies and encourages investments in research and development by ensuring inventors and/or owners of patents to profit financially from these new inventions and to recoup their investments.

In order to receive a patent, an invention must be novel, non-obvious, useful, and fall within the proper subject area as defined by the Canadian Patent Act.

Only certain categories of inventions are patentable under the Patent Act. A patent can be granted for a product, a composition, an apparatus, a process, or an improvement on any of these. You cannot patent a mere scientific principle, an abstract theorem, an idea, or methods involving professional skill or human judgment, and methods of medical treatment (in Canada)

To qualify as novel, an invention must not have been publically disclosed before the patent application has been filed. In Canada, and a few other countries, there is a 1 year grace period allowing inventors to disclose their invention prior to filing a patent application covering an invention. However, this grace period is not universal and any public disclosure of an invention prior to filing a patent application will result in some loss of rights.

To be considered non-obvious, an invention must contain at least some ingenuity. A non-obvious invention an inventive step such that when a skilled person faces the same problem, he or she will not directly and without difficulty arrive at the solution taught by the invention.