A patent is a type of intellectual property protection that gives the inventor "the right to 'exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling' an invention or 'importing' it into the U.S.".
A patent protects original ideas. It also protects the software code, a product design, a mobile application or a manufacturing process resulting from an improvement to already existing ones.
You can search by key words in a "Basic Search". If you already know more about the topics or patents you are searching for, use the "Advanced Search" features, for example: by inventor, by date, by classification.