For IP professionals
This is the portal for professionals working in the field of intellectual property. Here you'll find direct access to all necessary resources.
Quick links
News
27.05.2024 | Patents, Media release, Law and policy, Conference
New international treaty on intellectual property, genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge adopted
...more
No protection for...
The following are not patentable:
- Ideas, concepts, discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods
- Rules for games, lottery systems, teaching methods and organisational flow charts
- Diagnostics, therapies and surgery procedures used for humans or animals
- Plant varieties, animal breeds, and other primarily biological procedures for breeding plants or animals. However, biotechnological inventions, such as extracting human insulin from yeast cells, are patentable. The cultivation of a new plant variety can be protected under plant variety protection.
- Forms (these can be protected as designs or under copyright)
- Computer programs as such (these come under copyright). However, inventions which depend on a computer program are patentable (e.g. electronic steering)
- Inventions, the application of which would go against public morality or law (e.g. procedures for cloning humans)
Good to know
- Many things which are not patentable in other countries can be patented in the United States of America because of a different approach. The US Patent and Trade Mark Office (www.uspto.gov), for example, grants patents for computer programs and business methods.
Further information
- The patent examination guidelines in French (pdf) Chapter 2, page 17 or German (pdf) Chapter 2, page 15, contain a list of all the things which cannot be patented as well as further information regarding patenting computer implemented inventions.
- www.admin.ch
- Federal Act on New Plant Varieties (in German)
News
27.05.2024 | Patents, Media release, Law and policy, Conference
New international treaty on intellectual property, genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge adopted
...more
22.05.2024 | Patents, Media release, Law and policy
Transparency in the area of patent rights in plant breeding
...more
Events
19.01.2023 | Law and policy, Event
Conference on Intellectual Property & Sustainability at the University of Geneva
...more