PATENTS

How to obtain a patent

A patent is a monopoly awarded to the owner of a new and previously undisclosed invention. It lasts for a limited period (generally up to 20 years), allowing the owner to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention without permission.

Patents are used to protect the way something works, rather than the way it looks (unless the look is required so that it works). Patents are awarded on a country-by-country basis and only give rights in those countries in which they are granted.

Who can obtain a patent

Anyone can apply for a patent, provided he owns the invention either by being the inventor or through legal entitlement from the inventor.

In order to obtain this exclusive right, patent owners have to file patent applications describing their inventions in full. These are initially kept secret but are eventually published.

Generally, it is necessary to apply specifically to the patent office of a particular country for a patent. There are however a few systems, e.g. the European Patent Convention, where a central body is able to grant a patent effective in several countries. There is also a system, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), whereby an applicant may file a single international application specifying a large number of countries (up to 134 on 1 January 2007). However, whilst this allows central filing and a central search and examination, it does not grant patents. The application must still enter a national phase with the patent offices of the individual countries of interests.

Priority

If an owner of an invention files his first application for that invention in a particular country, then he has 12 months from that date to file applications for the same invention in other countries, "claiming priority" from that first filing. The effect is that his application is treated in those other countries as having been filed on the same date as it was first filed for the purpose of determining novelty and inventive step. It should be noted that this is not available to all countries and nationalities - usually only where the relevant countries are all members of the Paris Convention or of WTO (or both).

What can be patented?

Patents are generally intended to protect new and inventive products or processes. For an invention to be patentable, it must generally be novel, inventive and of practical use or industrial applicability. To be novel, the invention cannot have been disclosed to the public at any point in time previously (although most countries have varying degrees of exceptions to this rule). To be inventive, the invention cannot be obvious given everything that has ever been disclosed to the public at any point in time prior to the date of filing.

Many countries do not allow the patenting of what they deem to be mental processes that all are free to use or of inventions they deem would be generally undesirable to allow patentees to exclude others from using, e.g. medical processes.

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