Patents: Incentive to innovate and communicate — An introduction

This paper serves three functions: (1) It is introductory to this topical issue of the Transactions (PC-22/2) on patents, putting the 16 contributions into context; (2) it describes in non-legal language the requirements for patentability of an invention, the process of patenting, the contents of a patent document, and how to obtain or retrieve patents for use as sources of technical information; and (3) it provides a selected bibliography of 170 items on creative and business aspects of invention, general and specific aspects of patenting, and retrieval and use of patent information.