For IP professionals
This is the portal for professionals working in the field of intellectual property. Here you'll find direct access to all necessary resources.
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News
01.07.2024 | Law and policy, Copyright
New directive for the supervision of the collective rights management organisations
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Priority right and patent families
The first patent application for an invention establishes the priority. If you apply to patent the same invention in other countries within 12 months, these form a patent family.
Here is a more precise definition of the terms priority and patent families:
Priority
The priority period starts with the application to patent your invention in Switzerland or in another member state of the Paris Convention or the World Trade Organization (WTO). You have only 12 months to apply to patent the same invention in other countries. However, you can claim the priority date of the first application for these subsequent applications. This means that for these additional applications, this priority date will be respected in evaluating the novelty of the invention.
Patent families
The technical documents of the first patent application are the priority documents. A group of patent documents relating to the same priority documents are known as a patent family. As there can be different changes to the original text in the various national patent grant procedures, the claimed scope of protection of the individual patent family members are not always the same. However, it is in principle the same invention.
News
20.08.2024 | IPI, Dienstleistungen - OnlineServices, Dienstleistungen - Datenbanken und Verzeichnisse
Swissreg is to be completely modernised
...more
01.07.2024 | Law and policy, Copyright
New directive for the supervision of the collective rights management organisations
...more
27.05.2024 | Patents, Media release, Law and policy, Conference
New international treaty on intellectual property, genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge adopted
...more
Events
19.01.2023 | Law and policy, Event
Conference on Intellectual Property & Sustainability at the University of Geneva
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