Evaluation system of patent criteria in Iranian law

Document Type : Scientific research

Authors

Sanaz Alaee ¹

Morteza Asadlou Gharakhanloo ²

Mokhtar Naam ³

¹ 1-PhD student, Department of private law, Aras international Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

² Assistant professor, Department of private law, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

³ Assistant professor, Department of private law, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22067/economlaw.2025.88651.1377

Abstract

A patent is a privilege given by governments to innovators to create a new and economically important invention. For patenting of invention predict some rules in Iran. Some of these rules are substantive codition. Some of these conditions are novelty, industrial application and inventive step. That lack of these substantive conditions create difficulty for recognizing and supporting of patents. Also, some of these rules are procedural conditions. They are refer to prepare of statement and appendices and description of invention and claims. that the lack of these conditions can cause the invention not to be patented in some cases. but they are not as important as substantive conditions. In some international documents in the field of industrial property rights especially in the Trips Agreement, the substantive conditions of patent are stated. According to paragraph 1 of article 27 of the Trips Agreement, for patenting of any inventions, either product or process, predict some substantive conditions. These substantive conditions are:
Novelty: It means that the invention was not predicted in prior art or industry.
Invention step: It means that the invention does not be obvious and clear for a person with the ordinary skills.
Industrial practical: It means that the invention can be made or used in the field of industry or art. This Agreement has only stated these substantive conditions and assessment of these conditions is left to the internal regulations of the countries. Due to this, the regulations of the countries have the flexibility to evaluate those conditions according to their economic and social conditions and that is an important point for these countries. But the lack of definition of invention in the Trips agreement also the lack of explanation of the substantive conditions of the patent, caused countries to reach different results in the assessment of inventions. This problem has forced developed countries and consequently the world intellectual property organization to take serious measures in order to formulate the substantive laws of inventions and make them uniform in terms of substance. In Europe, according to the European patent convention 1973, In article 54 to 57 of this convention, patent conditions are newly, inventive step, and industrial practical. In the laws and regulations related to the inventions of countries, including developing and developed countries, usually these substantive conditions are stated. In the Irans patent law 1310, some of these conditions, including novelty ate mentioned. In the patent law of Iran 1386, in article 1 the invention is defined. Subsequently, in article 2, the conditions of patentable inventions are stated. And necessary criteria for patenting are novelty, innovative step and industrial application. But if the subject of the intended invention is one of the excluded subjects, it will not be able to be patented. In the continuation of this article, the concept of these conditions and the evaluation of these conditions and criteria in Iranian law will be discussed.

Keywords

Industrial application

Inventive step

Novelty

Patent

Subjects

• Intellectual Property Law

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