Word.ws English Dictionary

unpatent

unpatent verb: to release from a legal patent.

Verb

unpatent (third-person singular simple present unpatents, present participle unpatenting, simple past and past participle unpatented)

  1. (rare, transitive) To release from a legal patent.
    • […] unpatenting inventions. But he saw some decided advantages in publication patents if limited to agencies of the government. He, therefore, moved to amend by deleting "by an applicant" and inserting […]1962, American Bar Association. Section of Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law, Summary of Proceedings (page 68)
    • […] unpatenting of a guild secret, and its concomitant professional recording for mass consumption.1990, Techniques & culture, numbers 15-16, page 34

Forms of unpatent

third-person singular presentunpatents
present participleunpatenting
past participleunpatented
pastunpatented

Origin of unpatent

From un- + patent.

Questions about unpatent

What does unpatent mean?
Unpatent means to release from a legal patent.
What part of speech is unpatent?
Unpatent is a verb.
What is the past tense of unpatent?
The past tense of unpatent is unpatented.

Words near unpatent in the dictionary

  1. unpastured
  2. unpatch
  3. unpatched
  4. unpatches
  5. unpatching
  6. unpatent
  7. unpatentability
  8. unpatentable
  9. unpatented
  10. unpatenting
  11. unpatents

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unpatent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “unpatent.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unpatent. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.