{"id":412,"date":"2016-06-20T13:26:54","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T17:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/?page_id=412"},"modified":"2016-07-06T11:17:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T15:17:19","slug":"4-1-1-1-standard-for-patentability","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/4-trade-provisions\/4-1-intellectual-property-rights\/4-1-1-fostering-green-innovation\/4-1-1-1-standard-for-patentability\/","title":{"rendered":"4.1.1.1 Standard for Patentability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An important element of the balance is the standard for patentability. There are three generally acknowledged criteria for patentability. The product must:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Be new<\/li>\n<li>Involve a non-obvious inventive step<\/li>\n<li>Be capable of industrial application<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Under the TRIPS Agreement these three criteria, and the definition of \u201cinvention,\u201d are not further elaborated, leaving countries able to define a broad or narrow scope for patentability. Patent legislation that is narrow, and limited to single technologies or applications allows domestic innovators to \u201cinvent around\u201d any given patent, building on previous innovation to increase the impact and reach of new technologies, and stimulating national systems of innovation. Similarly, a stringent standard for the inventive step will prevent the patenting of routine discoveries in ways that frustrate truly valuable innovation.<\/p>\n<p>The current baseline standard for patentability as embodied in the WTO\u2019s TRIPS Agreement arguably strikes a reasonable balance, though each government will need to decide for itself where the appropriate balance lies in line with its domestic priorities and capacities. Our recommendation, from the perspective of fostering green innovation, is that TRIPS-plus strengthening of the standard should be pursued only by those countries with well-developed innovative capacity; others will find that stronger IP protection is costly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An important element of the balance is the standard for patentability. There are three generally acknowledged criteria for patentability. The product must: Be new Involve a non-obvious inventive step Be capable of industrial application Under the TRIPS Agreement these three criteria, and the definition of \u201cinvention,\u201d are not further elaborated, leaving countries able to define<a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/4-trade-provisions\/4-1-intellectual-property-rights\/4-1-1-fostering-green-innovation\/4-1-1-1-standard-for-patentability\/\" title=\"Read4.1.1.1 Standard for Patentability\">&#8230; Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":410,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"0"},"class_list":["post-412","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}