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A patentable invention is defined as an original solution to a technical problem. This definition opens the door to a set of interpretations that juxtapose science, technology, and discoveries. In this regard, the industrial property code intervenes to regulate meanings and procedures, listing the various entities that are not considered inventions.

“New inventions that involve inventive activity and are capable of industrial application can be the subject of a patent.”

Distinguishing between different types of inventions, we can have:

  1. Product Inventions: When the invention pertains to a material product (a tool, a machine, a chemical compound).
  2. Process Invention: When the invention consists not of a product but of a technique for producing goods or providing a service.
  3. Derivative Inventions: Those derived from a previous invention, such as improvement inventions, combination inventions, translation inventions.
  4. Dependent Inventions: When the invention requires the use of a product or process covered by a previous patent.

Not patentable inventions include:

  • Discoveries, scientific theories, and mathematical methods.
  • Plans, principles, and methods for intellectual activities, games, or commercial activities, and computer programs.
  • Presentations of information.
  • Methods for surgical or therapeutic treatment of the human or animal body and diagnostic methods applied to the human or animal body.
  • Animal breeds and essentially biological processes for obtaining them cannot be the subject of a patent.

A patent protects and enhances a technical innovation, a product, or a process that provides a new solution to a specific technical problem. It is a title that grants a temporary exploitation monopoly over the patent object, consisting of the exclusive right to produce, dispose of, and commercially use it, prohibiting these activities to other unauthorized entities.

In particular, the patent grants the holder:

  • If the subject of the patent is a product, the right to prohibit third parties, without the consent of the holder, from producing, using, placing on the market, selling, or importing the product for these purposes.
  • If the subject of the patent is a process, the right to prohibit third parties, without the consent of the holder, from applying the process and using, placing on the market, selling, or importing for these purposes the product directly obtained with the process.

A patent does not grant the holder the “freedom to use” or the right to exploit the technology covered by the patent, only the right to exclude others from using it.