Patent
Part of speech: verb
Definition: To successfully register an invention with a government agency; to secure a letter patent.
Part of speech: adjective
Definition: Open, unobstructed, expanded. Explicit and obvious.
Part of speech: noun
Definition: A declaration issued by a government agency declaring someone the inventor of a new invention and having the privilege of stopping others from making, using or selling the claimed invention; a letter patent. A specific grant of ownership of a piece of property; a land patent. Patent leather: a varnished, high-gloss leather typically used for shoes and accessories.
Example sentence: Patents have a place in medical science - for new inventions that advance the state of knowledge.
Proprietary
Part of speech: adjective
Definition: Of or relating to property or ownership, as proprietary rights.Of or relating to the quality of being an owner, as the proprietary class.Manufactured exclusively by the owner of intellectual property rights (IPR), as with a patent or trade secret.Privately owned, as a proprietary lake.Possessive, jealous, or territorial.
Example sentence: Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to redistribute it to others, and helpless because the users can't change it since they don't have the source code. They can't study what it really does. So the proprietary program is a system of unjust power.