Patent requirements
There are three requirements that the product or process must meet when applying for a patent:
- The invention must, in order to apply for the patent, be new and must therefore not have been made public anywhere in the world;
- The invention must not be aa obvious idea, but an inventive solution; and
- The invention must be real and therefore industrially applicable.
Publication
If these requirements are met and the patent is eventually granted, the invention will be included in the patent databases and patent registers, thus making the invention public. The purpose of this is for organisations to find out in this way whether what has been invented (or thought to have been invented) is already protected by a patent.
Validity
A patent is a national law, but it is also possible to apply for a patent in Europe or for a patent valid worldwide. It may be that another party contests the validity of a patent, for example by claiming that the patent does not meet the three requirements. This is done by means of invalidity proceedings, in which the Court determines whether the patent is indeed invalid or not.