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Your patented invention may infringe existing patents Your patent prohibits your competitors from producing, selling or using the protected invention.  […]

Due to the growing interdependence of the world’s economy and population, your market is not limited to the countries in which your company is based. Indeed you may have a global impact.

Therefore, how do you protect your inventions internationally?
There is no such thing as an international patent, as a patent is restricted to a specific territory and no single patent confers protection for your invention at a worldwide level.

Today, on 1 June 2021, the fourth amendment to the Chinese patent law will enter into force. In addition to an overall strengthening of the patent system, as we reported previously, significant changes have been introduced that are relevant to the pharmaceutical field.

Here, we want to alert you to the introduction of a completely new patent term extension system in China for pharmaceutical products. The mechanism is strongly inspired on the Patent Term Extension (PTE) system in the US and the analogous Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) in Europe, but there are significant differences as well.

According to European patent law, an invention has to be new to be patentable, i.e., it should not have been disclosed to the public before filing a first patent application. In Europe, the novelty is absolute: any disclosure, by anyone, by any means, is prejudicial to the novelty of the invention. There are only two exceptions: evident abuse and display at some officially recognized international exhibitions. 

We often meet inventors who believe that their invention is not patentable because it is an improvement of a patented invention.

However an improvement of a patented invention is patentable provided that in view of the state of the art, it is novel, involves an inventive step (i.e. is not obvious) and is susceptible of industrial application. The state of the art is defined as everything made available to the public before the date of filing of the patent application.

In contrast to the new patent procedure in France, the Belgian and Dutch patent procedures are remarkably simple and similar. 
Although both procedures require a search report, possible objections with respect to novelty and inventive step will not stand in the way of a grant of the patent. This means that applicants fulfilling all formal requirements can be quite certain of the grant of their application for patent protection in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Generally speaking, a granted patent is an exclusive intellectual property right to exclude others, for instance competitors, for a limited amount of time from manufacturing, using, selling, offering for sale, im- or exporting your patented invention.