The two most popular are:

1) Patent: to obtain the sole rights, for a specified period of time, to produce a product (can apply to items or ideas) which you have designed and originated.

2) Patent: one of a kind

An example is “Patent leather”: a type of leather which has a shiny, almost glass-like surface (this goes back to the original meaning though, because someone invented/designed/originated the idea and process to make this product.

Here’s a website that will give more insight into “patents”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent

Even though it starts as “Software patent”, it gives a lot of background and history of patents.

2. an invention or process protected by this right.

3. an official document conferring such a right; letters patent.

4. the instrument by which the government of the United States conveys the legal fee-simple title to public land.

5. patent leather.

–adjective patent(for 10, 12–15.) 6. protected by a patent; patented: a patent cooling device.

7. pertaining to, concerned with, or dealing with patents, esp. on inventions: a patent attorney; patent law.

8. conferred by a patent, as a right or privilege.

9. holding a patent, as a person.

10. readily open to notice or observation; evident; obvious: a patent breach of good manners.

11. made of patent leather: patent shoes.

12. lying open; not enclosed or shut in: a patent field.

13. Chiefly Botany. expanded or spreading.

14. open, as a doorway or a passage.

15. Phonetics. open, in various degrees, to the passage of the breath stream.

–verb (used with object) 16. to take out a patent on; obtain the exclusive rights to (an invention, process, etc.) by a patent.

17. to originate and establish as one’s own.

18. Metallurgy. to heat and quench (wire) so as to prepare for cold-drawing.

19. to grant (public land) by a patent.

2.an official right to be the sole maker or user of an invention or process ;