The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to patents:

Patent – set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention. An invention is a solution to a specific technological problem and is a product or a process. Patents are a form of intellectual property.

A patent can be described as all of the following:

This is a list of topics related to patents.