A sovereign grant of exclusion: the right to bar others from making, using, or selling an invention for a fixed term, in exchange for public disclosure. Its parameters are novelty, non-obviousness, and enablement; it persists through maintenance fees, litigation, and the registry that records it. The patent is the legal instrument — not the machine or process it protects.
[formal: corporata brevetti | substrate: behavior | horizon: as-long-as-us | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.7]