Priority date of patent meaning

This Practice Note outlines key aspects of patent law, including applying for and maintaining patents, patent assignment and licensing, and patent infringement. For more information about applying for and maintaining patents and transactions involving patents, see: Patent transactions and management—overview. For more information about disputes involving patents, see: Patent disputes—overview. What is a patent? A patent is a form of property that protects certain types of technical inventions. The invention can be a product or a process for doing something. Patents do not cover information or appearance, which may instead be protected by trade marks, copyright or design rights. To obtain a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application. Patent applications are filed at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) or the designated patent authority within the relevant country. The IPO examines applications to decide whether they should be granted. A patent document (whether an application or a granted patent) includes: bibliographic data—the front cover information,...

ARCHIVED: This Practice Note has been archived and is not being maintained. It was originally prepared for LexisAdvance® Practical Guidance Singapore. Priority date Section 17 of the Patents Act (Cap 221) states that a Singapore patent application takes as its priority date the filing date of the first patent application made in another country. That country must be a Paris Convention party or a World Trade Organisation member. Where the initial filing occurred in Singapore, the Singapore filing date serves as the priority date for subsequent applications abroad. This date fixes the state of the art for evaluating patentability. Paris Convention Treaty application An international application under the Paris Convention Treaty (PCT) can be filed with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as the receiving office. Doing so safeguards the applicant’s ability to seek patent protection across all PCT contracting states. Afterwards, the applicant has up to 30/31 months from the Singapore PCT filing date to decide whether to proceed to enter the...

A ‘patent’ is a legal instrument that grants an inventor monopoly rights. It safeguards novel inventions and can extend to elements such as the way things function, their composition, and the methods by which they are produced. A UK national patent, or a European patent designating the UK (EP(UK)), is infringed by carrying out acts in the UK without the permission of the patent proprietor (the patentee). Those infringing acts are prescribed by section 60 of the Patents Act 1977 (PA 1977) and include making, using, and importing a patented product or process. For detail on patent infringement, see Practice Note: Patent infringement...

Claim No : [ insert claim number ] IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICEBUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND & WALESINTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LIST (ChD)[ Patents Court OR Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ] Between:[ insert name ] Claimant/Part 20 Defendantand[ insert name ] First Defendant/Part 20 Claimant[ insert name ] Second Defendant/Part 20 Claimant Grounds of invalidity Set out below are the Grounds of Invalidity for [ GB Patent OR European Patent (UK) ] [ number ] (the Patent), as identified in the Defence and Counterclaim accompanying these Grounds, and on which the Defendants/Part 20 Claimants intend to rely. The purported invention, in all claims of the Patent, is not patentable because its subject matter lacked novelty in view of the state of the art at the Patent’s priority date [ and common general knowledge ]...