Understanding Patent in India
In simple words, Patents can be understood as ‘an exclusive statutory right for an invention granted for a limited period of time to the patentee by the Government, in exchange of full disclosure of his invention‘.
Patents are a type of statutory rights which give monopoly to exclude others, from making, using, selling, offering for sale or importing the patented product or process for producing that product for the aforementioned purposes without the consent of the patentee.
Further, the legal definition of Patents can be found under Section 2(1)(m) of the Indian Patents Act 1970 as ‘a patent for any invention granted under this Act’. Invention is also defined under Section 2(1)(j) of the Indian Patents Act 1970 as ‘ a new product or process involving an inventive step and capable of industrial application’.
In order to be a patentable subject matter, the invention is required to meet the following patentability criteria:
- It should be novel.
- It should have inventive step or it must be non-obvious
- It should be capable of Industrial application.
- It should not fall within the provisions of sections 3 and 4 of the Patents Act 1970.
Read more about Patent Law by clicking on the links below:
