Official types of patents include Utility Patents, Design Patents, Plant Patents and Provisional Patents.

Utility Patents are the most common, and include most ‘invention’ patents: mechanical patents, electrical patents, chemical patents, pharmaceutical patents, software patents and biotechnology patents. These include patents with or without moving, interacting parts – a shovel would still fit into the utility section, just as would a car engine.

Design Patents are ornamental designs of functional items, like a new type of fabric pattern (a new type of fabric, on the other hand, would be a utility pattern and a new graphic pattern or logo for commercial purposes would be a trademark). Plant Patents are patents for newly developed plant varieties.

For more information on provisional patents, see the section on “What is a provisional patent?”

Logo trademarks can guarantee that the trademarked logo used for your business cannot be used by a competing business. A logo may include words and typographical elements, but must include graphical elements – a logo trademark cannot consist of plain text and phrases alone. As a logo always includes such stylized graphical elements, the classification for trademarking a logo will always be a stylized/design mark.