Novelty
Previously, in order to determine the novelty and inventive activity of the invention, the state of the art on the filing date of the application or in its case, its claimed priority, were considered. The new Law states that in order to determine the novelty and inventive activity of the invention, the state of the art in on the filing date and time of the application or in its case, it’s claimed priority will be considered.
Since the word “date” is actually the time at which an event occurs, stating that the “filing date and time” will be considered is an overkill in the sense that the time was already previously considered.
It is important to point out that applications considered as discarded, withdrawn, abandoned or denied will not be included in the prior art, unless these were published. This proviso was already included in the Rules of the previous Law, however was hardly enforceable since it was not part of the Law.
Inventive Activity
According to the new Law, in order to determine if a claimed invention implies inventive activity, the existing relationship between the application filed (meaning the invention) and the document(s) of the state of the art, individually or combined will be considered.
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