Legislative Implementation of Flexibilities - Estonia
| Title: | § 6(1), (2.1) and (3) and 7 of the Patent Act (RT I 1994, 25, 406) of 16/03/1994 as last amended by Law RT I 2004, 20, 141 of 10/03/2004 |
| Field of IP: | Patents |
| Type of flexibility: | Patentability of substances existing in nature |
| Summary table: |  |
Provisions of Law
§ 6. Subject of invention
(1) The subject of an invention may be a device, process, material, including biological material, or a combination thereof.
(2) The following, inter alia, shall not be regarded as the subject of inventions:
1)discoveries, including descriptions of the formation or development of the human body or sequence or partial sequence of human gene, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
(3) For the purposes of this Act, "biological material" means any material, including micro-organisms, which contains genetic information and is capable of reproducing itself or being reproduced in a biological system.
§ 7. Unpatentable inventions
(2) The following biotechnological inventions shall not be protected by a patent:
1) processes for cloning human beings;
2) processes for modifying the germ line genetic identity of human beings;
3) uses of human embryos for commercial purposes, including processes prohibited by the Artificial Insemination and Embryo Protection Act ;
4) processes for modifying the genetic identity of animals which are likely to cause them suffering without any substantial benefit to man or animal, and animals resulting from such processes;
5) essentially biological processes for the derivation of biological materials or the production of plant or animal varieties, except microbiological processes for the derivation of micro-organisms;
6) inventions the application of which is confined to a single plant or animal variety.
(3) For the purposes of this Act, "essentially biological process for the derivation of a biological material or production of plant or animal varieties" means a process which consists entirely of natural phenomena, including crossing and selection.
(4) For the purposes of this Act, "microbiological process" means any process involving or performed upon or resulting in microbiological material.