The Next Attempt of Legislative Struggle Against Patent Trolling

On February 1^st, 2018 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered bill No. 7538 "On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine to Improve Legal Protection of Inventions and Utility Models." The document is another attempt to reform patent legislation. Among other things, its practical purpose is to solve problems connected with the abuse of intellectual property rights to inventions and utility models.

Thus, the bill specifies an array of objects that cannot be protected under this law:

• varieties of plants and breeds of animals;
• processes of reproduction of plants and animals biological in their core, not related to non-biological and microbiological processes, as well as the products of such a process;
• arrangement of semiconductor products;
• artistic design;
• surgical or therapeutic methods for treating a human or an animal;
• methods of diagnosis of a human or animal body;
• processes of human cloning;
• processes of alteration through the germline of the genetic identity of human;
• use of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes;
• processes of changing the genetic identity of animals that can affect their suffering without any significant medical benefit for humans or animals and animals derived from such a process;
• human body at various stages of its formation and development, as well as the simple detection of one of its elements, in particular, the sequence or parts of the gene sequence. This provision does not affect legal protection of an invention whose object is the elements of the human body outside the body or obtained otherwise by using a technical process, including the sequence or partial sequence of the gene, even if the structure of this element is identical to the structure of the natural element;
• product or process affecting plants or animals, the use of which is limited to a particular plant variety or a particular breed of animal;
• a product or process that relates to natural biological material, and not separated from its natural environment, or which is not a product of the technical process;
• new forms of drug known from the level of technology, including salts, esters, ethers, compositions, combinations and other derivatives, polymorphs, metabolites, pure forms, particle sizes, isomers, new dosages or any new property or new use of the known medicinal product.

In addition, the bill provides for the impossibility of recognizing the violation of rights resulting from the state registration of an invention (utility model), the use of an invention (utility model) in studies conducted for the purpose of preparing and submitting information for registration of a medicinal product, animal / plant protection products.

Another key change in the case of adoption of the bill will be the possibility of invalidating the rights to an invention (utility model) by the Appeals Chamber of a specialized institution on the basis of non-compliance with the terms of patentability.