This status included imperial protection and the levying of special taxes on the Jews for the Empire's treasury (Latin: camera regis).
The latter were not allowed to marry, and might spend their life unmarried as a member of the household of a privileged relative or employer.
For example, in October 1763 King Frederick II of Brandenburg-Prussia granted Moses Mendelssohn, until then under protection by being employed by a Patentjude, a personal, uninheritable privilege, which assured his right to undisturbed residence in Berlin.
His wife and children, who had no independent permission to reside, lost their status of family member of a Patentjude when Mendelssohn died in 1786.
In 1810 Stein's Prussian reforms introduced a freely inheritable Prussian citizenship for all subjects of the king, doing away with the different prior legal status of the Estates, such as the Nobility, the burghers of the chartered cities, the unfree peasants, the officialdom at the court, the Patent Jews, and the Huguenots.