WHAT IS PATENT?
According to WIPO[i], A Patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application.
The motive behind the patent system is to encourage inventors to advance the state of technology by awarding them special rights to benefit from their inventions. There are three criteria for any invention to be patentable:
- The Invention must be novel.
- The Invention must be a non-obvious one.
- The Invention must be useful in a bonafide manner.
WHAT IS INVENTION?[ii]
Under Section 2(1)(j) of the Patents Act, 1970, inventions are defined as those that are either products or processes, are novel, have an inventive step, and are industrially applicable. When seen through the lens of patent law, inventions are only those products and processes that satisfy patentability requirements. The definition of invention however includes only three of the patentability requirements, and inventions must satisfy two additional requirements to be eligible for patent grant. One of them relates to the list of subjects that are not patentable even if they are inventions, and the other reviews the description and workability of the invention.
Section 2(1)(ja) defines “inventive step” as a feature of an invention that involves technical advance as compared to the existing knowledge or having economic significance or both and that makes the invention not obvious to a person skilled in the art.
Section 2(1)(l) defines “new invention” as any invention or technology which has not been anticipated by publication in any document or used in the country or elsewhere in the world before the date of filing of patent application with complete specification, i.e., the subject matter has not fallen in public domain or that it does not form part of the state of the art.
WHAT INVENTIONS ARE PATENTABLE UNDER THIS ACT?
All the inventions can be patented provided they don’t fall under the categories of inventions that are non-patentable under Section 3 and 4 of the Patents Act, 1970.[iii]
However, for an invention to be patentable, it should:
- Relate to a process or a product or both;
- Have novelty (be new);
- Should involve an inventive or innovative step;
- Should be useful for industrial application.
NOVELTY REQUIREMENT: a ‘new invention’ is defined as any invention or technology which has not been anticipated by publication in any document or used in the country or elsewhere in the world before the date of filing of a patent application with complete specification, i.e., the subject matter has not fallen in the public domain or that it does not form part of the state of the art. This is one of the important requirements for inventions to be patentable.
INVENTIVE OR INNOVATIVE STEP: it is a crucial part in terms of invention being patentable. Section 2(ja) defines “inventive step” as “the characteristic of an invention that involves technological advancement or is of economic importance or both, as compared to existing knowledge, and invention not obvious to a person skilled in the art.”
INDUSTRIAL APPLICIBALITY: section 2(1)(ac) deals with the industrial application in relation to an invention stating that the invention is capable of being made or used in an industry.
SOURCES:
[i] WIPO, https://wipo.int/portal/en/ (last visited Dec 5, 2021).
[ii] WIKIPEDIA, https://www.wikipedia.org/ (last visited Dec 6, 2021).
[iii] Diva Rai, Patent laws in India: basics you must know, IPLEADERS, https://blog.ipleaders.in/ (last visited Dec 7, 2021, 8PM).
Aishwarya Says:
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