Patented technology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Patented technology - Essay ExampleThe more tolerant patent approach in the U.S. defines non- open 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 suffice, in fact, to help avoid muddiness and promote productivity in Europe, as well as discourage the sort of infamous patent infringement confrontations recently seen in the American software product industry.Patentability requires an invention to be novel - trustworthy 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, orgenuinely original enough to justify the patent. Novelt y 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.2Useful 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 unimaginative terms, referring specifically to industry as the objective of the application.III. Patent Law -Actions and ReactionsThe Patents Act of 1977 was passed to implement the PTT, (Patent Co-o peration Treaty), EPC and CPC (Community Patent Convention), closely following these definitions of the EPC and was the first effort at normalisation 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