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NEW RESOLUTION FURTHER REDUCING THE PATENTABILITY SCOPE IN ARGENTINA

 

This time we address to our colleagues and clients in order to inform of a new resolution jointly issued by the National Industrial Property Office (INPI, as in its Spanish acronym), the Secretariat of Industry and the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.

This new resolution, No. 283/2015, is supplementary to the one passed in 2012, by means of which the Patent Office ceased considering polymorphs and pseudopolymorphs, enantiomers, Markush-type claims, inventions of selection, salts and esters, formulations and compositions, combinations, dosages and doses and second medical uses, as patentable inventions.

This new resolution, published on October 5th, 2015, limits, even further, the scope of inventions that can be subject to protection in Argentina, thus modifying the patentability criteria as regards live matter and natural substances.

As to live matter, in those applications wherein a modified sequence of nucleotides or amino acids is claimed, all claimed sequences must be specifically defined by their sequence and must have a clear and complete disclosure along the patent specification, evidencing that they maintain the same attributed function.

With respect to genetically modified organelles, this type of claims will only be accepted if the organelles are incapable of creating a complete individual in their environment.

Lastly and most importantly, in cases that transformation events are claimed, being this understood as the insertion into the genome of an organism in a stable and joint manner of one or more genes or DNA sequences that are part of a defined genetic sequence, our Patent Office, at its own discretion, will only consider those cases which claims specify their isolated status and that are not capable of conducting a full organism, as patentable material; this applies not only to plants, their parts and components, including seed, but also to animals and parts.

It is clear enough that this new joint resolution widely exceeds the authority of the governmental agencies which executed same, and as in the 2012 resolution, this should be its Achilles’ heel from the legal point of view.

Unfortunately, once again our Patent Office does exceed its scope of action to the detriment of the Patent Act, by further restricting the patentability criteria established in said act. Furthermore, it departs from the international criteria for the granting of inventions.