You need to secure a patent application from which country you are base all the necessary requirement should be listed there. The patent laws usually require that, for an invention to be patentable meets the requirement, and it does differ in some countries example some countries in asia doesnt have legal provisions regarding CRI Computer Related Invention. You can also take a look at Patent Cooperation Treaty if you are seeking patent internationally.

The thing is some of the existing patent system provides little to no transparency...this is a big issue.

The difference between authorship and inventorship is in the subject under protection. An author protects the expression while the inventor aims to protect an idea of a workable invention (at least workable in principle).

An idea is patentable under most jurisdictions (please check the particulars of your invention and jurisdiction with your patent lawyer,this is only for purposes of your question) when a phosita is capable of reducing your description of your invention to a workable device or design plan. A patent is not a design plan. The distinction is drawn on the level of specificity. A patent generalizes to get coverage of the idea.

A patent demarcates your claim to what you perceive is your idea. To do this you must generally:

1) Describe what is the problem you are trying to solve

2) How other other people have solved similar problems

3) What are the components of your invention

4) How the components interrelate and function together to solve the particular problem you are proposing

5) From that description you have to specify what is your contribution and how is it novel and non obvious

When the problem that you are proposing is one that is common to a group of individuals or corporations and they have a need to solve it then you have an innovation that is worthy of investment for commercialization.

Give yourself time to analize these points before investing in a patent or commercialization effort. Also a patent is not a license to produce a product but a tool to get some type of protection from copying. You can commercialize without a patent.

If you decide to get a patent, the best way is to invest on a lawyer that knows your field. You can also try in parallel to do customer discovery without going into the details of your invention (you can do evidence based entrepreneurship based the work by Blank or TDMI based on NIST). Once you feel comfortable with your inventions potential, then you can invest on manufacturing and distribution channels.

In brief, A patent gives its owner some rights, while the inventor, is not necessarily the owner of a patent.

I really appreciate our dear RG colleagues for your wonderful contributions this question. Wadzani