Legislative Implementation of Flexibilities - Norway

Title:	Sections 1 (2) 1), (3) and (5), 1a and 3c of the Patents Acts No.9 of 15/12/1967 as last amended by Act No.80 of 29/06/2007
Field of IP:	Patents
Type of flexibility:	Patentability of substances existing in nature
Summary table:

Provisions of Law

Section 1

(2) Subject matters not regarded as inventions include anything which merely consists of:

1. discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;

(3) Inventions may also constitute patentable inventions when they concern a product consisting of or containing biological material, or a process by means of which biological material is produced, processed or used. Biological material, which is isolated from its natural environment or produced by means of a technical process, may be the subject of an invention even if it already occurs in nature.

Biological material means, for the purpose of this legal text, material that contains genetic information, and can reproduce itself or be reproduced in a biological system.

(5) A patent cannot be granted for what are essentially biological processes to produce plants or animals. An essentially biological process means, for the purpose of this legal text, a process, which consists entirely of natural phenomena such as crossing or selection. A patent may, on the other hand, be granted for microbiological or other technical processes or for a product produced by such processes.

A microbiological process means, for the purpose of this legal text, any process involving, performed upon or resulting in the production

of microbiological material.

Section 1 a. The human body, at all of the various stages of its formation and development, and the simple discovery of one of its elements, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, cannot constitute patentable inventions.

An element which is isolated from the human body or otherwise produced by means of a technical process, including the sequence of a gene, may constitute a patentable invention, even if the structure of that element is identical to that of a naturally existing element.

Section 3 c. The protection conferred by a patent on biological material, which already exists in nature, shall only extend to the part of the material that is necessary for the industrial application specified in the patent application. It shall be evident from the patent application how the biological material may be used for industrial purposes.