Can the competition rules grant patents? Patents can protect your inventions from being copied and tampered with at will. There are many conditions for applying for a patent. Not all creations can be applied. Let's share with you whether the rules of the contest can be patented.
Can the competition rules grant patents? 1 No.
Patent right, referred to as "patent" for short, is a kind of intellectual property right, which is the exclusive right to implement a specific invention and creation within a certain period of time. Patent rights include invention patents, utility models and designs. Moreover, the competition rules you mentioned belong to the rules and methods of general intellectual activities, and you can't apply for a patent.
You can't apply for a patent in the following situations:
(1) scientific discovery;
(2) rules and methods of intellectual activities;
(3) Diagnosis and treatment of diseases;
(4) Species of animals and plants;
(5) substances obtained by nuclear transformation;
(6) No patent right shall be granted to other inventions and creations that violate the laws of the state, social morality or harm the public interests.
Can I apply for a patent for the competition rules? Can the algorithm be patented?
You can't. Lack of macro
Paragraph 2 of Article 25 of the Patent Law stipulates that no patent right shall be granted to the rules and methods of intellectual activities.
Arithmetic belongs to the rules and methods of intellectual activities. Therefore, no patent right can be granted.
No patent right shall be granted: Article 15 No patent right shall be granted to the following items:
(1) scientific discoveries;
(2) rules and methods of intellectual activities;
(3) Methods of diagnosis and treatment of diseases;
(4) Species of animals and plants;
(5) substances obtained by nuclear transformation;
(six) the design of the pattern, color or the combination of the two.
The production method of the products listed in Item (4) of the preceding paragraph may be granted a patent right in accordance with the provisions of this Law.
(Refer to the Patent Law of People's Republic of China (PRC). )
Can I apply for a patent for the rules of the competition? 3 rules and methods can't be patented?
First of all, let's learn about the laws and methods of intellectual activities. The Patent Examination Guide points out that "intellectual activity refers to people's thinking movement, which originates from people's thinking and produces abstract results through reasoning, analysis and judgment, or it must indirectly act on nature through people's thinking movement as a medium to produce results", and "the rules and methods of intellectual activity are those that guide people's thinking, expression, judgment and memory". Therefore, the rules and methods of intellectual activities can be understood as those formulated by people themselves. For example, the company's management methods, digital speed algorithm, book arrangement methods, language grammar, physical exercise methods, game rules and so on. , are artificially prescribed methods, which belong to the situation of not granting patent right as stipulated in Article 25 of the Patent Law.
Secondly, let's find out why the rules and methods of intellectual activities can't be patented. Patent protection is put forward to promote scientific and technological progress and encourage people to innovate.
The inventor put forward an innovative scheme, which can overcome the defects of the existing technology, so when this innovative scheme is applied to industry, it will promote the progress of science and technology to a certain extent. In order to encourage people to innovate, the concept of patent protection is adopted to protect the innovative scheme proposed by the inventor. Without the permission of the patentee, others may not use the patented product, and the licensee needs to pay a certain royalty to use it, so as to encourage people to innovate.
Therefore, in order to promote scientific and technological progress, the patent protection scheme must be an industrial application scheme to promote scientific and technological progress, and some rules and methods that do not involve industrial application are inevitably outside the scope of patent protection.
At the same time, technological monopoly needs to be overcome in the process of scientific and technological progress. For example, algorithms involve a wide range of technical fields. On the one hand, they belong to the rules and methods of intellectual activities and cannot be granted patent rights; On the other hand, if this algorithm is granted a patent right, then the use of this algorithm in any field needs the authorization of the patentee, leading to technological monopoly. Therefore, from this perspective, a patent right cannot be granted.
Then, how to avoid that patent application belongs to the rules and methods of intellectual activities stipulated in Article 25 of the Patent Law and cannot be granted a patent right?
The patent application of the algorithm is explained here, and such problems are often encountered in patent processing.
For the patent application of the algorithm, the algorithm usually includes initial data, iterative calculation, updating data and other processes. If the algorithm itself is only used in patent application, the rules and methods belonging to intellectual activities cannot be granted patent rights because they belong to the calculation rules that are considered to be formulated. However, when applying for this kind of patent, the inventor usually does not want to protect the algorithm itself, but uses the algorithm in a specific field, such as image processing field, data processing field or other specific fields. When this algorithm is applied in a specific technical field, it can be applied to industry in essence and will not cause monopoly at the same time. From this point of view, it meets the requirements of patent authorization and does not belong to the situation that Article 25 of the Patent Law does not grant a patent right.
Therefore, for the patent application of the algorithm, the specific application field should be defined first; Secondly, the algorithm is combined with this application field to solve the technical problems in this field. In line with the above two points, the scheme involving the algorithm at this time belongs to the technical scheme, which does not belong to the situation that the patent right is not granted as stipulated in Article 25 of the Patent Law, so there is a prospect of being granted a patent right.