Patenting Flashcards
What are intellectual property (IP) rights?
The collective name for rights that protect the realisations of ideas and concepts. IP rights include: copyrights, design, trademarks and patent.
Why is it important to have some basic knowledge on patents?
To carefully make decisions on patenting → to be aware of the choices you have, such as:
- keep idea secret?
- share idea or not? → share with whom?
- publish idea?
- protet in a patent application?
Here, the main choice to patent something is to make money with an invention.
What is a patent?
A set of exlusive rights granted upon application by a state or a collection of states to an inventor or his assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.
What is a granted patent?
Confers the right to forbid third parties to commercially exploit the patented invention within the territory for which the patent is granted.
Note: a patent does not give its owner the right to commercially exploit
A granted patent thus gives you the exclusive right to forbid anyone else to use the invention, however a patent can be dominated by other patent(s). Name two ways this can happen.
- Patent licensing → granting permission to a third party to extricate benefits by selling and using the licensed product.
- Finite right → patent (usually) lasts 20 year, after expiration, the invention becomes available to commercial exploitation by others.
- Territorial right → the exclusive rights are only applicable in the country or region in which a patent has been filed and granted.
What types of patent claims are there?
- Substance claims
- Product claims
- Process claim
- Use claims
What should be in the application form of a patent?
- Front page with dates of filing, publication and grant; names of inventor(s) and applicant(s); abstract, etc.
- A description in which the invention is presented and in which different embodiments are described
- Examples that demonstrate the benefits of the invention
- Claims that define the scope of protection
What five criteria are there that decide whether something is patentable?
- Industrially applicable → theories are not patentable
- Novel → not disclosed in prior art
- Inventive step → difference between claimed invention and the prior art represents an inventive step
- Clarity → claims must clearly define the matter for which protection is sought
- Sufficiency of disclosure → the invention must be disclosed in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art.
Name things that are not patentable.
- Theories, discoveries, mathematical methods
- Computer programs
- Aesthetic creations
- Methods of treatment of the human or animal body
What is prior art?
Everything that has been made available to the public before the filing date of the patent application, which includes:
- published documents (in any language)
- oral presentations
- marketed products
What is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)?
PCT assists applicants in seeking patent protection internationally for their inventions (among others).
What are advantages of internationally filing a patent?
- More market information
- Postponement of costs (→by filing internationally, national filings can be postponed to 30 months).
Patents are national entities, but there are inter-governmental organisations for obtaining a patent. Where do you need to go if you want to apply a patent in Europe (i.e. unitary patent)?
The European Patent Convention (EPC)
What is the Unified Patent Court (UPC)?
The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is an international court set up by participating EU Member States to deal with the infringement and validity of both Unitary Patents and European patents, putting an end to costly parallel litigation and enhancing legal certainty.
What are advantages of patenting?
- Protection
- Exclusivity
- Threat for competition
- Prevent others from patenting
- Revenue through licensing
