zurück zur Übersicht

medical inventions

The Patentability of Inventions Relating to Medicine,

Pharmaceuticals, and Biotechnology According to

European Patent Practice

• Autor: Dr. Ralf Perrey and Dr. Konstanze Lenhard
• Datum: 31. July 2007

The patentability of inventions relating to the fields of medicine, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology is not positively regulated in the European Patent Convention (EPC). Generally, patentable subject matter which refers to the above fields has to be out of the range of the exclusions of patentability implemented in the EPC. In the following, the recent developments in the application of said exclusions of patentability regarding medical methods, medical applications, genetically altered organisms by e.g. recombinant DNA technology, and the human body or parts thereof in the jurisprudence of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Organisation (EPO) will be discussed.

download english version
download japanese version