A procedure-focused reference that answers the questions inventors and businesses actually bring to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, grounded in Title 35 of the U.S. Code and Title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It walks through what a patent grants, who may be named as an inventor, the substantive patentability requirements, and the choice between provisional and nonprovisional filing, then follows an application through prosecution, appeal, costs, and maintenance. Along the way it explains the America Invents Act's first-inventor-to-file rule and its narrow grace period, how continuations and divisionals extend a patent family, how Track One and the Patent Prosecution Highway compress pendency, and how the PCT defers the expense of going global. It closes with post-grant challenges at the PTAB, the mechanics of ownership and assignment, the basics of enforcement, and worked hypotheticals throughout. This is the "how the machinery works" companion to UpLaw's plain-English patent primers.