Posts Tagged: "innovation patent"

Obvious Inventions Patentable: The Australian Innovation Patent

Essentially, innovation patents are 8 year short form patents available in Australia as an alternative, or in parallel with standard, or utility, patents. An innovation patent can be filed on an obvious invention, is hard to invalidate and, when filed as a divisional from a standard patent application, can be infringed from a date before the standard patent application was published.

Ian Lindsay

June 15, 2014

Apple’s ‘Innovative’ Australian Patent Strategy

As readers will no doubt be aware, Australia is one of the jurisdictions in which Apple is currently pursuing litigation against its Android-based smartphone and tablet competitors. The claims and counter-claims by Apple and Samsung are the subject of a trial in the Australian Federal Court in Sydney which has now been extended into the first months of 2013. According to reports, as many as 22 Apple patents have been asserted against Samsung, although it is as yet unclear how many of these will actually be pressed at trial. A number of the asserted patents are innovation patents. An ‘innovation patent’, is in many respects unique to Australia. An innovation patent provides a ‘second tier’ right, with a lower barrier to validity than the conventional inventive step test, and a shorter maximum term of protection of just eight years.

Mark Summerfield

August 15, 2012