Industrial utility as a requirement for patents

Abstract

The study analyses industrial utility as a requirement for patents under Brazilian law, taking as its axis Article 15 of Law No. 9,279/96, applicable alike to patents of invention and utility model patents. It compiles and updates the author's earlier studies, places the requirement within the sequence of examination of the application, distinguishes it from the patentable subject matter of Article 10, and compares the national treatment with that of United States, German, Indian and European law, particularly in the European biotechnology subsystem. It unfolds the various contents of the notion of utility — usefulness, completeness and repeatability —, examines the requirements of technical character in the object, the application and the result, and relates the requirement to the sufficiency of disclosure of Articles 19 and 24. It gathers the relevant international law, with Article 1(3) of the Paris Convention, Article 27.1 of the TRIPS Agreement and Article 33 of the PCT, precedents of the Federal Regional Court of the 2nd Region and EPO decisions, as well as INPI examination guidelines. It maintains that industrial character is defined by the manner of application, identified with repeatability, and not by the type of economic activity in which the solution is employed.