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In your written patent application you must fully describe your invention to such a degree that a person skilled in the same field as the invention could make or use that invention. A person skilled in the same field as the invention should be able to read your patent application and understand it. The inventor must be able to make claims about his/her invention in clear and definite terms.The part of a patent application that describes and reveals your invention is called the specification and includes various types of descriptions, claims, and drawings depending on the type of invention and type of patent involved. Remember, ideas alone cannot be patented. In other words - you can't just write, "I have an idea for a new alarm clock." You must be able to describe how your alarm works so that an expert in alarm clocks would understand how it would work and that it would indeed work. It's like a recipe ... a good cook should be able to produce your invention based on your patent. As a novice, to file your first patent application yourself is often unwise. However, you could write your own descriptions and then pass them over to your attorney. The attorney could use your writings as a guide and a time-saver, and that will save you money. You should present your inventor's logbook, prototype, and any prior art searches to the attorney. You must write a complete and thorough description of your intellectual property as you cannot add any new information to your patent application once it is filed. You can only make changes to the subject matter that could be reasonably inferred from the original drawings or description.

Utility patents protect inventions that are a novel, nonobvious, and useful, such as: process innovations, machine innovations, manufacturing innovations, compositions of matter, or incremental improvements from foundational innovations. The three patentability requirements: New and Novel: For a United States patent the invention must never have been made public in any way, anywhere in the world, a year before the date on which an application for a patent is filed. In other countries, you have no one year grace period and require absolute novelty. Original and Nonobvious: An invention involves an inventive step if, when compared with what is already known, it would not be obvious to someone with a good knowledge and experience of the subject, for example, if you just make cosmetic changes that is obvious. Useful: This means that the invention must take the practical form of an apparatus or device, it has to do something.

The Japanese commissioner in Washington DC in the 1900's studying the American patent system said, "We have looked about us to see what nations are the greatest, so that we can be like them... We said, 'What makes the United States such a great nation?' and we investigated and found that it was patents, and we will have patents."