Basic Requirements for a Patentable Invention

A patent opposition may be based upon evidence which shows that an invention lacks the basic requirements for a patentable invention and may aim for the invention as a whole or for individual claims or the scope of such claims. 

After publication of the application and the search report, the applicant has to request substantive examination for patentability to be performed at the EPO. The examination of the application is performed by the Examining Division of the EPO. On completion of the examination, which includes an examination for inventive step as well as for novelty (novelty and inventive step are basic requirements for patentability see Section IV. A.), either the application is rejected or the European patent is granted. The specification as granted is published and the grant of the European patent leads to national patents being registered in the designated EPC countries. 

The first and most basic paper pertaining to patents which needs the inventor s signature is the oath. This is a required instrument without which no patent application can be filed, since the Patent Office rules prescribe that a patent application to be examined by the Patent Office must be accompanied by an oath, a petition for the grant of the patent, and the filing fee. The oath is, in most cases, a formal document which states the country of which the applicant is a citizen fit has been held that the inventor intends to become a U.S. citizen is unacceptable (2), but the statement that he is a citizen of no country was accepted (13). It also states that the applicant believes himself to be the first and original inventor of the improvement described and claimed in the attached specification that he does not know and does not believe that the same was ever known or used before his invention thereof or patented or described in any printed publication in any country before his invention thereof or more than one year prior to the application, or in public use or on sale in the United States more than one year prior to the application that the invention has not been patented in any country foreign... 

To be able to file a patent application, a certain number of basic and formal requirements have to be met. Basic requirements are quite similar in the main industrial countries. Formal requirements vary a good deal from one country to another. Inventors, for example chemists, are mainly concerned with basic requirements and some formal requirements like disclosure of the invention, that is, description (see Section IV. B. 2.). 

Besides primary patents that are basic patents that cannot be circumvented and whose expiry has to be waited for, there are other categories of patents that may appear as severe hurdles. One example is the pharmaceutical formulation of therapeutic proteins, a dangerous minefield also for classical generics. Numerous patents claim distinct product-specific formulations. These inventions are related to a more advanced development stage, and they usually expire several years later. I believe that some of the biogeneric players are not fully aware of this difficult situation. Again, it requires specific experience to find a gap within a dense net of formulation patents. The biogeneric products will probably appear... 

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