Open AccessThe partial waiver of the rights and partial invalidation of rights to the invention
Author(s) -
Petro Borovyk
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
teorìâ ì praktika ìntelektualʹnoï vlasnostì
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2519-2744
pISSN - 2308-0361
DOI - 10.33731/52020.233736
Subject(s) - waiver , scope (computer science) , reservation of rights , discretion , law , law and economics , fundamental rights , rendering (computer graphics) , political science , business , human rights , right to property , economics , computer science , artificial intelligence , programming language
Borovyk P. The partial waiver of the rights and partial invalidation of rights to the invention. In view of changes in the Law of Ukraine «About protection of rights for inventions and utility models» introduced according to the Law No. 816-IX as of 21.07.2020, it is implied that a patent owner can waive rights provided by a state registration of an invention (utility model) fully or partially, and a court can render the rights for the invention (utility model) invalid fully or partially. The partial waiver of the rights or rendering the rights invalid causes a number of issues on a rather frequent basis, in particular, regarding a certain procedure of defining the entire scope of rights according to the patent and a portion of these rights. Since the scope of rights is defined by claims, the partial waiver of the rights or the partial rendering the rights invalid substantially represents a change of the scope of rights, which are defined by the claims as published. The patent may be granted for a group of inventions. In such case, the scope of rights shall be defined by the claims that comprise several independent claims. Here, the partial waiver of the rights for the invention may be carried out by waiving one or several independent claims at the discretion of the patent owner or by rendering one or several independent claims invalid by the court. Therewith, the scope of rights that is defined during conduction of an examination for another invention of the group of inventions, which are mentioned in a single protection document (patent), is not changed. The partial waiver or the partial rendering the rights for the invention invalid for the claims having one independent claim is a more problematic case. A key aspect of this problem is an influence of the proposed amendments of the claims onto the scope of rights for the invention and its correspondence with the requirements for granting a legal protection. More specifically, it is an establishment of a fact of reduction of the scope of rights when introducing the proposed amendments into the independent claim and examination of a new version of the independent claim for compliance with the requirements of patentability. An important aspect also lies in establishment of a balance of interests of the patent owner and third parties. The patent owner will receive a mechanism of implementation of the right for protection of allowable embodiments of the invention, while the third parties will receive a right for a legal certainty by means of an analysis of the scope of rights of the new version of the claims. The article discloses grounds for waiving the rights for the invention and the mechanism for implementation of the waiver under the legislation in force both for the case of the group of inventions and for the partial waiver or the partial rendering the rights for the invention invalid with the claims having one independent claim.
Keywords: scope of rights, independent and dependent claims, amendment to claims, proceedings