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This chapter assesses the rationales and justifications commonly seen for and against patents, which inform all aspects of patent law. Against this backdrop, the chapter explains the architecture and procedures of contemporary patent systems as they operate in the UK, within the European patent system, and through international agreements, instruments, and procedures. The chapter considers the patent registration process in the UK. Unlike copyright-and like registered trade marks and registered designs-patent protection is a registered right, granted by an intellectual property office following an application and examination process. The chapter also reviews changes over time and areas of particular debate and possible future evolution.
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This Article examines the formal law of enablement, focusing on a perceived split in the enablement doctrine: whether disclosure of a single mode of an invention is necessarily sufficient to satisfy the requirement of enablement or whether the full scope of the claim must be enabled. In examining this split, this Article articulates the enablement inquiry in conceptual terms, identifying two elements of the courts\u27 analyses that are implicit in every enablement determination: the nature of enablement disputes, as challenges and the articulation of a target or targets that must be enabled. , With this understanding in mind, the full scope and any mode language are easily reconciled: For any given target, one mode suffices. But each and every target must be enabled
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Five years after its inaugural edition, LexisNexis has published a successor to its patent law flagship The Modern Law of Patents. All the general editors are esteemed experts in the field of patent law. Although all the editors are practising lawyers, each editor is highly respected within the academic field as well. The editors' work was supported during the writing of this edition by Judge Michael Fysh QC, who acted as a consultant editor. The editors also had the assistance of contributing practitioners and academics. The targeted readership of the book consists largely of practising patent lawyers and patent attorneys but it is not premature to say at this point that it will also be of great benefit to anyone who has an interest in patent law as it is applied and practised in the United Kingdom. The editors have shown great ambition in this second edition-they have not merely brought the book up to date but rather the entire text was largely rewritten. A key change to the first edition is that the editors have formulated a discussion of patent law and its practice as it applies not only in the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) but also in the European Patent Office (EPO). Possessing an understanding of European patent law and its application by examiners and the Boards of Appeals at the EPO is indispensable for the British reader given that a vast majority of UK patents are typically examined and granted on the shores of the river Isar. But rather than simply integrating the law and practice of the EPO into the discussion on UK patent law, the book deals with these issues separately. This modification might seem trivial at first, but upon commencement of reading this separation soon reveals itself to be a tremendously useful feature of the book as it allows the reader to instantly compare the sometimes divergent approaches taken in the UK and at the EPO. The book is divided into five parts. It begins with a discussion of the substantive law of patents. The aforementioned separation between the discussions of the practices in the United Kingdom and the European Patent Office is maintained throughout all the patentability criteria. For instance, the discussion on the 'inventive step' highlights concisely the differences of the 'Problem-Solution Approach' and the 'Windsurfing/Pozzoli' approach, having first introduced both approaches separately. This approach brings some much-needed clarity to the issues.
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The question of what types of inventions may be patented has become highly contentious in patent offices, law courts, legislatures, scientific organizations, international trade forums and various social advocacy groups. The patentability of computer software inventions, DNA-based products, new business techniques, medical diagnostic methods, or complex systems operating over the Internet, for example, have come under question. This paper addresses this topic by presenting the results of a comparative study of statutory law and case law in the United States and Europe concerned with what subject matter is patent eligible. In particular, the paper explores whether only technical inventions should be eligible for patent protection and, if so, whether those inventions must be physical in order to qualify as "technology" in patent law 1 .