Our patent consultancy department, specialized in various technical-scientific and IT sectors, works out patent applications in any technological field. Our assistance begins with understanding the needs of each individual client and continues by preparing, filing and obtaining the patent in Italy and abroad.
Special attention to the continuous evolution of national and international regulations, together with a consolidated network of foreign partners, allows our team to assist our clients in all patent phases, from the preparation and filing of Italian and foreign applications, to the subsequent consultancy concerning examination procedures, obtaining and maintaining patents.
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Faq
The patent for inventions protects technical improvements, meaning products and production processes developed in any technological-industrial field. An invention, in order to be such and to be patented, does not necessarily have to contain a high degree of innovation and can only refer to a detail or a small improvement, provided that it represents a new and original solution to a technical problem.
Ideas, in an abstract and general sense, as well as intuitions or other categories of innovations, are not considered patentable by law. The general principle of law is that ideas can be freely appropriated, and therefore, to be protected they must find their own implementation, an expressive form.
In fact, art. 45 of the industrial property code explicitly states that the following cannot be patented:
- Scientific theories, discoveries and mathematical methods;
- Plans, principles and methods for intellectual activity, for play or for commercial activities and computer programs;
- Presentations of information;
- Methods for surgical or therapeutic treatment of the human or animal body and methods of diagnosis applied to the human or animal body;
- Animal breeds and the essentially biological processes for obtaining them, new plant varieties in respect of which the invention exclusively consists in the genetic modification of another plant variety;
- Everything that is not a product of human invention and already exists in nature.
The maximum life of patents for inventions is 20 years starting from the filing date of the application.
When the 20 years of protection of patents for inventions expire, the object no longer enjoys protection, i.e. it becomes public domain and anyone can use it without constraints or payment of rewards.
It is not possible to patent something that already exists, is marketed or disclosed. Novelty, in fact, is a crucial requirement for the patentability of an invention. Therefore, objects or inventions that have already been marketed or disclosed are excluded.
Specifically, an invention is considered disclosed when it has already been made accessible to third parties in any form, written or oral, such as, for example, by marketing an invention or publishing it on the web or through a scientific article.