Patentability

Within the context of a national or multilateral body of law, an invention is patentable if it meets the relevant legal conditions to be granted a patent. By extension, patentability also refers to the substantive conditions that must be met for a patent to be held valid. Requirements The patent laws usually require that, for an invention to be patentable, it must be:

Patentable subject matter, i.e., a kind of subject-matter eligible for patent protection
Novel (i.e. at least some aspect of it must be new)
Non-obvious (in United States patent law) or involve an inventive step (in European patent law)
Useful (in U.S. patent law) or be susceptible of industrial application (in European patent law)

Usually the term "patentability" only refers to "substantive" conditions, and does not refer to formal conditions such as the "sufficiency of disclosure", the "unity of invention" or the "best mode requirement". Judging patentability is one aspect of the official examinat

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Summary

Patentable subject matter, i.e., a kind of subject-matter eligible for patent protection
Novel (i.e. at least some aspect of it must be new)
Non-obvious (in United States patent law) or involve an inventive step (in European patent law)
Useful (in U.S. patent law) or be susceptible of industrial application (in European patent law)

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The role of fees in patent systems: Theory and evidence

Gaétan Jean A de Rassenfosse

This paper reviews the economic literature on the role of fees in patent systems. Two main research questions are usually addressed: the impact of patent fees on the behavior of applicants and the question of optimal fees. Studies in the former group confirm that a range of fees affect the behavior of applicants and suggest that a patent is an inelastic good. Studies in the latter group provide grounds for both low and high application (or pre-grant) fees and renewal (or post-grant) fees, depending on the structural context and policy objectives. The paper also presents new stylized facts on patent fees of 30 patent offices worldwide. It is shown that application fees are generally lower than renewal fees, and renewal fees increase more than proportionally with patent age. Â© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

2013

Patent

A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishin

Prior art

Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and th

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Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent i

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