Grace periods and patentability

Patentability of life and ethics.

Patent law has relied in part on ethical considerations since its inception in Europe. Such considerations have been introduced more recently in the United States. Whereas the EU Directive on the protection on the occasion of the Human Genome Project of biotechnological inventions was intended to foster economic development in Europe, its implementation is outweighted by controversy about paten...

Totipotency/pluripotency and patentability.

UNLABELLED In their article entitled " COMMENTARY Is totipotency of a human cell a sufficient reason to exclude its patentability under the European law" (Stem Cells 2007;25:3026-3028), K.T. Vrtovec and B. Vrtovec conclude that arguments based on differentiation potential should not be an obstacle to patenting human embryonic stem cells (and related cells referred to as totipotent or pluripot...

The Antitrusting of Patentability

Deciding a patent’s validity is costly, and so is deciding it incorrectly. Judges and juries must expend significant resources in order to reach a patent validity determination that is properly informed by the relevant facts. At the same time, patent validity determinations reached quickly and cheaply may conserve resources today while creating future costs. Wrongly preserving an invalid patent...

Ethics and patentability in biotechnology.

The systems of patent rights in force in Europe today, both at the level of national law and on the regional level, contain general clauses prohibiting the patenting of inventions whose publication and exploitation would be contrary to "ordre public" or morality. Recent years have brought frequent discussion about limiting the possibility of patent protection for biotechnological inventions for...

Blockchain Receipts: Patentability and Admissibility in Court