Patent Services

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Patent:

Patent is a statutory right for an invention granted for a limited period of time to the patentee by the Government, in exchange of full disclosure of his invention for excluding others, from making, using,  offering for sale or  selling, and importing the patented product or process for producing that product for those purposes without the consent of patentee.

In a patent application, there are usually various parts like title, description, drawings, claims, and abstract. It is this “claims” portion that is perhaps the most significant part of the application, as this encompasses the invention for which the applicant claims protection. The patent application must qualify the three main criteria for patentability ‘Novelty’ ‘Inventive step’ and ‘Industrial application’. Accordingly, before applying for a patent, applicants must ensure that their inventions, prima facie, are new, involve an inventive step, and can be used in or by the industry. The Act defines the term ‘inventive step’ under Section 2 (1)(ja) 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”.

The Indian Patent Act, under Section 3 i.e., ‘Non-Patentability’ provides a list of inventions that are specifically barred from being patentable even if they meet the patentability criteria. So, it is important that the applicants also ensure that their inventions do not fall under Section 3.