One of the key requirements to get a patent application is that the invention needs to be "new" or "novel". That may sound a simple definition - the European Patent Convention states an invention is "considered to be new if it does not form part of the state of the...
Patent Searching – Freedom to Operate or Patentability?
Let's suppose that you have developed a new product and you want to carry out a prior art search of existing patents. There's often a misconception about the objectives for a search. There's often confusion between a search based on "freedom to operate" and "patentability". In some cases, the main...
Artificial Intelligence: Challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights Framework
The European Union published in November 2020 a report on the challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights framework by the development of artificial intelligence. The report focussed in particular on the fields of copyright and patent law as this is the area in which the challenges are increasingly found. The...