Title: | Article 1 §§ 4 and 5 of the Patents Act No. 17/1991 as last amended by Law no. 167/2007 |
Field of IP: | Patents |
Type of flexibility: | Exclusion from patentability of plants |
Summary table: |
Article 1
A patent shall not be granted for plant or animal varieties. It is however possible to grant patents for inventions pertaining to plants and animals if the implementation of the patent is not confined for technical reasons to a particular plant or animal variety. In this Act, plant variety refers to a plant variety as it is defined in the Act on Plant Variety Rights, No. 58/2000.
A patent shall not be granted on an essentially biological process for producing plants or animals. By an essentially biological process, this Act refers to a method that on the whole is based on natural phenomena such as crossing and selection. Nonetheless, patents may be granted for processes in the field of microbiology or other technical methods or the products of such processes. Process in the field of microbiology refers to any method that exploits microbiological material or produces microbiological material.