Short answers, pulled from the story.
A patent application is both a formal document filed at a patent office and the legal process of requesting the grant of a patent. The document describes the invention and contains claims defining the scope of protection sought. The legal process, sometimes called patent prosecution, continues until the application is granted, refused, or withdrawn.
A national application is filed at one country's patent office and covers only that country. A regional application, such as one filed at the European Patent Office, can cover multiple countries under a single process. An international application filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is managed centrally by WIPO and can eventually lead to patents in any PCT contracting state, though the PCT itself does not grant patents.
A provisional application, accepted primarily by the USPTO, lets an inventor secure a priority date without filing a complete formal application. It requires an enabling disclosure but not claims. If not converted into a full non-provisional application within one year, it expires, is never published, and never becomes prior art.
Patent protection is generally granted for 20 years. After that, the patent expires and the invention enters the public domain, where anyone can use it commercially without the former patent holder's permission.
In 2020, approximately 3.3 million patent applications were filed worldwide, representing a 1.6% increase over 2019. This follows steady growth from under 1.8 million filings in 2006.
A patent gives the holder the right to prevent others from making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing the patented invention without authorization. Importantly, the patent does not grant the holder the right to use the invention themselves; it grants only the right to exclude others. The holder can license or sell those rights to others.