Anyone can be an applicant. You do not have to be a US citizen or resident. The applicant can be a human being (a natural person) or a corporation (a juristic entity). A corporation can apply for a patent in its own name. The inventors, however, have to be human beings, and a patent application must state the name of the inventors.
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There are three types of patents in US, including utility patents, design patents and plant patents.
Utility patents cover machines, compositions of matter, and processes, almost everything.
Plant Patents cover asexually reproducing plants, such as a new rose variety grown by taking a cutting. Design patents cover the ornamental features but not the functioning features of a manufactured item, and have more in common with copyright protection than with a utility patent.
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The life of a patent is called the patent term. The patent term is different depending on when the patent application was filed.
U.S. design patents resulting from applications filed on or after May 13, 2015 will have a 15 year term from issuance.
The term of a U.S. plant patent is 20 years from filing.
For the utility patents, if being filed on or after June 8, 1995, the patent term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest US application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications). The basic patent term can be adjusted by the Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) or under the Patent Term Extension (PTE) (for some specific industry).
However it is more complicated to determine the expiration date for a utility patent as the patent term might be affected by many factors, including PTE, PTA, Terminal Disclaimer and maintainer fees payment.
In order to obtain a patent, the inventor (or the applicant) must file a patent application with the USPTO. After receiving patent application filed by inventor or applicant, USPTO examiner will examine the application to determine if a patent application meets the standards legally required. Examination of a patent application (so-called patent prosecution) often takes two years or more.
However, under current practice, there are a number of efficient ways to speed up examination, including Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) and Track One Prioritized Examination.
A US patent application can be filed in one of two ways: as a Provisional Patent Application or as a Nonprovisional Patent Application. A nonprovisional application is the usual type application which will be subjected to examination by examiner in a very formal way. In contrast, a provisional application acts as a quick, cheap and easy placeholder, which allows the applicant to obtain the earliest first filing date, which is often very important during the subsequent prior art search and examination. For example, if your product is going to be exhibited at the show tomorrow without any patent application being filed, filing a provisional application promptly will be a good choice.
The provisional application will not be examined and it acts to hold your place for one year. The applicant can file a nonprovisional and claim priority to a provisional within one-year priority period (normally there will be two-month window after the expiration of one-year priority, after paying official fee and request for restoration). Both utility and plant patent applications can claim priority to a provisional application. A design patent application, however, cannot claim priority to a provisional application.