If you are looking for an introduction to US patent law, I recommend General Information Concerning Patents on the USPTO website.
This article is well organized and gives a nice overview of the US patent system, explains the difference between utility and design patents, and the difference between inventions protected by patents and other intellectual property (IP) protected by copyright or trademark. It should help new inventors understand the requirements of patent applications, drawing requirements, and patent prosecution in general.
My critical comment is the description of patentability searching is way out of date. It actually recommends searching in the Public Search Facility of the USPTO or in patent libraries throughout the US or worse in CDs. This is not the way to conduct searches today and hasn't been the way since Web searching took over about 1995.
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