What Can Be Patented

Each country has its own laws for patents, which means it is important to remember that countries differ in the length of protection time given the name used for the term patent and even about what can be patented. In the United States, patents are sometimes known as utility patents, but note that some countries provide utility models which are similar to patents, but are not as inventive and which also have a shorter protection period. Utility patents are also called petty patents (or Gebrauchsmustern in German). In the UK, it is neither possible to patent a new plant or animal, nor a method of treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy or a method of diagnosis. However, this is not the case in all countries e.g., in the United States, plants can be patented. 

For more about novelty and many other aspects of biotech and pharmaceutical patents, see Chapter 4, What Can Be Patented , in Patents for Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotechnology by Philip W. Grubb (Oxford, Oxford University Press, Fourth Edition, 2004). This book represents a particularly up-to-date and well-written resource for those seeking further information. 

Sharpe, C. C. 2000. Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Searching on the Internet. Jefferson, NC McFarland. This book was researched and written in anticipation of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offering searchable databases for the general public. It serves as a guide for the lay person on what is a patent, what can be patented, and shows the different types of patents. 

As we saw in the previous section, properly determining inventorship is important because inventorship determines initial ownership and all of the attendant financial considerations that go with it. Listing proper inventorship is also critically important because improper inventorship means that the inventors listed are not the actual inventors of the subject matter. If you are thinking to yourself, so what then you need to recall that 102(f) of the U.S. patent code provides that A person shall be entitled to a patent unless. ..he did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented (emphasis added). In 102(f), the word he refers to the inventive entity (all of the inventors) named on the patent.10 Thus if an inventor has been left off the patent (referred to as nonjoinder of a proper inventor), then the listed inventors did not invent the subject matter of the claimed invention entirely themselves since they did not invent all of the subject matter of the claimed invention.11 Such a patent is invalid. Likewise, if a patent is granted that lists one or more persons who were not actually inventors, then he would not have invented all of the subject matter sought to be patented since some of the listed inventors would not actually be inventors (this is referred to as misjoinder ). Such a patent is also invalid. If this seems a harsh remedy for what can be a difficult determination to make (as we soon will see), then you will be relieved to know that mistakes in inventorship can be corrected both before and after issuance of the patent. 

The purpose of a patent in any country is to confer a state-recognized property right to an invention. The laws of individual countries differ in such matters as the types of inventions that can be patented, the degree to which an invention must advance the state of the art, the types of prior documents and activities that will defeat patentability, and whether or not the patentee can be required to issue licenses to others and under what conditions, and what constitutes infringement. 

Bisulphite. My personal nightmare. I use metabisulphite, what I think it s the same. Sometimes product is unfilterable, other one couldn t be recovered with NaOH solution. Investigate, I m not a great chemist. Solvent, /Va/VO or PcfC/j may be can be reduced, but I think the quantities in this sample are really good. Solvent is easily evaporated, NaN02 could be only slightly reduced and Pddi is about 4,5 % versus 6 % in patent, but it s enough because all safrol reacts. Well, I think it s all... ... 

At least three types of citations in patents can be identified inventors citations found in the patent specification, examiners citations found on issued U.S. patents, and examiners citations found on pubHshed appHcations and granted patents from other countries. A patent inventor cites prior art in order to distance the invention from that art, rather than to show a close relationship. Whereas scientific researchers may want to show how closely they have built on what went before, for an inventor that can suggest anticipation or at least obviousness. Thus, citations within a patent typicaHy try to demonstrate the inadequacies of prior inventions and the uniqueness of the patentee s own work. References tied by this type of citation can be usefiil in developing a picture of the state of the art, but often show sharply differing technologies. 

The requirements for regulatory approval and intellectual property management, and in particular the ability to file USPTO patent submissions, do place constraints on what systems can be applied for record keeping, but the good news is that there are no insurmountable barriers to these records being captured and managed electronically. 

The KOCAT Society (no patent reference known by authors), in South Korea, solved the DeNO problem of big burners, by directly injecting oxygenates on the catalyst at the outlet of the burner. This process involves the third function of our model. This example shows that only one model (the present one) for DeNO reaction can be used for either mobile or stationary sources. Pathways are the same what is changing is the nature of the reductant, which has to be activated, through its partial oxidation, at the temperature when N—O bonds (dinitrosyl species) are broken. 

Most companies selling cyanine dyes do not reveal their exact structures. This likely is due to each company keeping proprietary the small synthetic tweaks that create unique fluorescence properties for their dyes. However, some structures are available through published documents, such as patents and early publications (Leung et al., 2005). Figure 9.45 illustrates some of these structures, which may not reflect precisely what any one company actually offers today, but it gives an idea of the types of modifications that can be done to add water solubility and reactivity. 

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