Section 3: Patentable inventions

1. New inventions involving an inventive step and capable of industrial application shall be patentable in all fields of technology. 2. The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the meaning of the first paragraph of this Article: a) Discoveries as well as scientific theories and mathematical methods; b) Aesthetic creations; c) Plans, principles and methods in the exercise of intellectual activities, in gaming or in the…

An invention is considered to be new if it is not included in the state of the art. The state of the art consists of everything that has been made available to the public before the filing date of the patent application by written or oral description, use or any other means. The contents of French patent applications and European or international patent applications designating France, as filed, which have…

If a first filing has been made in a State which is not a member of the Paris Union or the World Trade Organization, a right of priority attached to that filing having effects equivalent to those provided for by the Paris Convention may be granted under the same conditions only to the extent that that State grants, on the basis of a first filing of a French patent application…

For the application of Article L. 611-11, a disclosure of the invention shall not be taken into consideration in the following two cases: -if it takes place within the six months preceding the filing date of the patent application; -if it results from the publication, after the filing date, of an earlier patent application and if, in either case, it results directly or indirectly : a) From an obvious abuse…

An invention is considered to involve an inventive step if, for a person skilled in the art, it does not follow in an obvious manner from the state of the art. If the state of the art includes documents mentioned in the third paragraph of Article L. 611-11, they are not taken into consideration when assessing inventive step.

An invention is considered industrially applicable if its subject matter can be made or used in any kind of industry, including agriculture.

Methods for the surgical or therapeutic treatment of the human or animal body and diagnostic methods applied to the human or animal body shall not be patentable. This provision shall not apply to products, in particular substances or compositions, for the implementation of one of these methods.

Inventions shall not be patentable if their commercial exploitation would be contrary to human dignity, public policy or accepted principles of morality, and this shall not be inferred from the mere fact that such exploitation is prohibited by law or regulation. .

The human body, at the various stages of its constitution and development, as well as the simple discovery of one of its elements, including the total or partial sequence of a gene, cannot constitute patentable inventions. Only an invention constituting the technical application of a function of an element of the human body can be protected by patent. This protection covers the element of the human body only to the…

I. – The following are not patentable: