Innovation Review Released – Room for Potential Patent Reform?

Australia’s Innovation Review Committee handed down its green paper on innovation earlier today: http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Documents/NIS-review-web.pdf

The Review examined numerous issues relevant to innovation, patent law being amongst them. The Review put forward the following recommendation:

"Patent law should be reviewed to ensure that the [inventive step] required to qualify for [a patent is] considerable, and that the resulting patent [is] well defined, so as to minimize litigation and maximize the scope for subsequent innovators."

The recommendation conforms with the submission made by IP Australia tracked in blog posted earlier this year, see: http://www.iproo.net/2008/06/ip-australia-improvement-to-australian.html

The recommendation will no doubt become the subject of further research and debate – particularly when the inventive step standard is compared with Australia’s trading partners.