Industrial applicability
Encyclopedia
In patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, industrial applicability or industrial application is a patentability
Patentability
Within the context of a national or multilateral body of law, an invention is patentable if it meets the relevant legal conditions to be granted a patent...

 requirement according to which a patent can only be granted for an invention
Invention
An invention is a novel composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived, in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social...

 which is susceptible of industrial
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

 application, i.e. for an invention which can be made or used in some kind of industry. In this context, the concept of "industry" is far-reaching: it includes agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

, for instance. An example of invention which would not be susceptible of industrial application is "a method of contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...

 [...] to be applied in the private
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...

 and personal sphere of a human being".

In relationship with United States patent law, the utility
Utility (patent)
In United States patent law, utility is a patentability requirement. As provided by , an invention is "useful" if it provides some identifiable benefit and is capable of use...

 requirement is a more or less corresponding, but different, requirement.

European patent law

At the European Patent Office
European Patent Organisation
The European Patent Organisation is a public international organisation created in 1977 by its contracting states to grant patents in Europe under the European Patent Convention of 1973...

 (EPO), the requirement that an invention is susceptible of an industrial application has generally been taken to be more or less automatically fulfilled but a 2005 decision of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO saw this requirement analysed in new detail. In decision T870/04 it was held that the mere fact that a substance can be made in some way does not necessarily mean that the requirements of are fulfilled, unless there is also some "profitable use" for which the substance can be employed.

When an alleged invention does not comply with the generally accepted laws of physics, the industrial application requirement is related to the requirement of sufficiency of disclosure
Sufficiency of disclosure
Most patent law systems require that a patent application disclose a claimed invention in sufficient detail for the notional person skilled in the art to carry out that claimed invention. This requirement is often known as sufficiency of disclosure or enablement, depending on the...

, i.e. the fact that a "patent application must disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art".

excludes "methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...

 or therapy
Therapy
This is a list of types of therapy .* Adventure therapy* Animal-assisted therapy* Aquatic therapy* Aromatherapy* Art and dementia* Art therapy* Authentic Movement* Behavioral therapy* Bibliotherapy* Buteyko Method* Chemotherapy...

 and diagnostic
Medical diagnosis
Medical diagnosis refers both to the process of attempting to determine or identify a possible disease or disorder , and to the opinion reached by this process...

 methods practised on the human or animal body" from patentability, because these methods are regarded as not susceptible of industrial application. The purpose of this exclusion is "to deny patent protection to methods which serve medical purposes, so that no one could be hampered in the practice of medicine by patent legislation."

External links

(European Patent Convention
European Patent Convention
The Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, commonly known as the European Patent Convention , is a multilateral treaty instituting the European Patent Organisation and providing an autonomous legal system according to which European patents are granted...

)
    • : Industrial application
    • : The requirement of industrial applicability under Article 57 EPC (Patent Cooperation Treaty
      Patent Cooperation Treaty
      The Patent Cooperation Treaty is an international patent law treaty, concluded in 1970. It provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states...

      )
  • Article 1 of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
    Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
    The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris, France, on March 20, 1883, was one of the first intellectual property treaties. It established a Union for the protection of industrial property...

    , see in particular paragraph (3) for guidances as to how the word "industry" should be interpreted.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK