6. Patentable Subject Matter

Abstract

This chapter considers the subject matter for which European patents may validly be granted under the European Patent Convention (EPC), and the substantive European (EPC and EU) legal principles governing their identification and conception. To this end it discusses the two-fold role of the requirement for an invention in European patent law: first, as a means of filtering protectable from non-protectable subject matter; and second, as a means of denoting the object of patent protection, i.e. that which must be new, inventive, susceptible of industrial application, and clearly and sufficiently defined and described in the patent specification, and that with reference to which the scope of the patent monopoly is defined under Article 69 EPC. It also discusses the range of public policy-based exclusions from European patentability, and their relation to the requirement for an invention itself.