If you meet the standard for getting a patent then what you get is a right to exclude others from practicing what you’ve claimed for a period of 20 years from the filing date of your patent application. And so the important thing to know about that is that even though you get this right to exclude others from practicing the invention that doesn’t’ necessarily give you the right to use the invention, to use your own invention, to sell your product in the marketplace. And the reason for that is because a patent is a right to exclude and not a right to use there might be other parties that have their own patents and their own rights to exclude and you might need to have access to somebody else’s patent in order to be able to practice your own.

And so a good example of that might be a chair with four legs and a chair with four legs with wheels. If you have a patent that claims a chair with four legs with wheels and somebody else has a patent that claims a chair with four legs then in order for you to sell your product, which is the chair with four legs and wheels you need to be able to have access to the other party’s patent that just has the basic chair with four legs. So because a patent is a right to exclude and not a right to use you have this system of nested rights and you have to determine whether selling your product requires access not only to your own patent but to the patents of others as well.