Patented technology - Essay Example

The more "tolerant" patent approach in the U.S. defines non-obvious as sufficient to involve an inventive step. The European Patent Office has a more exacting interpretation of this term. A European patent application entails an inventive step by providing a solution to a technical problem in a non-obvious way.1 This difference may serve, in fact, to help avoid confusion and promote productivity in Europe, as well as discourage the sort of infamous patent infringement confrontations recently seen in the American software industry.

Patentability requires an invention to be "novel" -original and new. Article 54 (1) of the European Patent Convention defines "novel" as being separate from the "state of the art," (existing and publicly available.) "Non-obvious" in U.S. law, or "inventive step" in European law, under the terms of the EPC, both designate the requirement that an invention be "novel," or genuinely original enough to justify the patent. Novelty is therefore prerequisite for inventive step. An invention may be regarded as having an inventive step only if it is not obvious to a person skilled in the art.

Novelty and inventive step are, consequently, different criteria. This definition of inventive step has been a subject recently in question by the U.K. patent office, as it has often been found to give rise to patents lacking in significance. By the same count, however, greater facility in obtaining patents contributes to positive qualities of "innovation and competitiveness."2"Useful" in U.S. law or "Industrially applicable" in European law designates that an invention must serve a function, or fulfil an application and is equally part of this basic framework of patentability criteria.

The European definition is again more exact in practical terms, referring specifically to industry as the objective of the application.III. Patent Law -Actions and Reactions:The Patents Act of 1977 was passed to implement the PTT, (Patent Co-operation Treaty), EPC and CPC (Community Patent Convention), closely following these definitions of the EPC and was the first effort at standardization in contrast to previous provisions of the Statute of Monopolies of 1623, which up until 1949, merely affirm that a patent may be granted exclusively for a new method of manufacture.

3 A concept further examined by Lord Hoffmann in Biogen Inc v Medeva plc [1997] RPC 1 (page 34), is that the definition of an inventive step may be dependant on the nature of the invention. An original invention is the result of adding a new concept to an existing reserve