Sufficiency of disclosure
Sufficiency of disclosure is an important patent law requirement to be met by a patent in order to be validly granted. According to this requirement, an invention must be described in the application or patent in a sufficiently clear and complete manner to enable the person skilled in the art to carry out the invention. This requirement is found in most national patent jurisdictions, if not all.
The disclosure requirement lies at the heart and origin of patent law. A state or government grants an inventor a monopoly for a given period of time in exchange for the inventor disclosing to the public how to make or practice her invention. If a patent fails to contain such information, then the bargain is violated, and the patent is unenforceable.
In European patent law, when the description of an invention in a patent or patent application fails to meet the disclosure requirement, it often means as a result that the invention is not industrially applicable. For instance, if a patent application relates to an invention in the field of cold fusion but if said application does not provide the person skilled in the art with enough experimental parameters to successfully carrying out the invention, i.e. cold fusion, the invention is not applicable in an industry, and cannot be patented.
Best mode requirement
In the United States, the sufficiency of disclosure requirement is complemented by an additional requirement, generally not found in other national patent jurisdictions: the "best mode requirement". According to the requirement, the disclosure must also contain the inventor's "best mode" of making or practicing the invention. For example, if an inventor knows that a liquid should be heated to 250 degrees for optimal performance, but discloses in the patent that the liquid should be heated to "above 200 degrees", then the inventor has not disclosed his "best mode" for carrying out the invention.
The "best mode requirement" only applies to what the inventor knows at the time the application was filed, not as to what was subsequently discovered.
See also
External links
- Art. 5 - The Description of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)
- Art. 83 - Disclosure of the invention of the European Patent Convention (EPC)