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What kind of invention can be granted a patent?
For an invention to be patentable it has to be novel. Exclusive right is not accorded to old, previously known technique. You shall not make your invention available to the public before filing for a patent, because doing so even by yourself makes it ”previously known”. The filing date is the crucial limit. Anything that has become known before it anywhere in the world may form an obstacle to patenting the invention.
Besides being novel, the invention must also involve an inventive step. The Patents Act expresses the same thing by saying that the invention has to differ essentially from those that have become known previously. This means that if the invention is novel, that is: it differs somehow from the known solutions, the difference has to be so big that the idea is not obvious to a person skilled in the art.
The third precondition for patentability is industrial applicability. By this legislators have expressed their willingness to restrict the group of patentable inventions to technical solutions. Industrial applicability shall, however, be understood in a broad sense. Besides conventional industry, it includes the methods and devices needed in commerce, building industry, farming, forestry, gardening, fishing, handicrafts etc. However, Section 1 of the Patents Act lists several inventions which as such are not considered industrially applicable and therefore not patentable either.
Ideas cannot be patented. A patentable invention is the concrete embodiment of an idea: a device, a product, a process for making a product, for instance, or a new use for a previously existing product.