Business Law notes 8 - Rebecca Lacy PDF

Preview

Summary

Rebecca Lacy...

Description

Ciaran Lowney's Business Law notes 8 (20/11/17) Patent law 

Patents are concerned with inventions producing a technical result – new and improved products, processes and uses that are capable of industrial application



A patent grants the right to exclude others from making, using, and selling the invention for a limited term of years from application filing date in most of the jurisdictions.



The Patents Act 1992 sets out the law on patents in Ireland.



Chapter 2 contains the criteria for patentability. For an invention to be patentable it must be: 1. New and not the same as anything that already exists 2. Inventive and not obvious to a person already skilled in the relevant area of technology 3. Capable of being made or used in some kind of industry.



Under the Act, the following cannot be regarded as a patentable invention:  Scientific discoveries and theories  Aesthetic creations  A scheme, rule or method of performing a mental act or a program for a computer  The presentation of information.



The following are excluded from patentability under the Act:  Inventions that by their publication or exploitation would be immoral or against public order requirements.  Plant and animal varieties arising from some biological process.



Four steps: 1. Identify patent: Novel or not Section 9 and Section 10 2. Novelty (section 12 and section 11) 3. Inventive step (section 14) 4. Industrial application (section 13)



Case

1. Lux Traffic Controls Ltd v. Pike Signals Ltd [1993] Held to patentable, because it is a novel technical machine for traffic light system. 2. Harvard v. Oncomouse In the Harvard/Oncomouse application, the Examine Division enunciated a test that necessitated a balance between value for humans versus protection of environment and aoidance of cruelty to animals, so the patent was granted to a transgenic mouse on the grounds that the value for human would far exceed other considerations. 3. Eli Lilly and Co v Human Genome Sciences (2011) The court considered an appeal against the declaration of invalidity of a biomedical patent for a new human protein on the grounds that it was not susceptible of industrial application. Held: The patentee’s appeal succeeded. The court had to apply the jurisprudence of the European Board. The Board’s approach applied principles under which the disclosure of the existence and structure of Neutrokine-a and its gene, and its membership of the TNF ligand superfamily should have been sufficient, taking into account the common general knowledge, to satisfy the requirements of Article 57, because all known members of the TNF ligand family were expressed on T-cells and were able to co-stimulate T-cell proliferation, and therefore Neutrokine-a would be expected to have a similar function....