ABSTRACT

The underlying purpose of the patent system is the encouragement of improvements and innovation. In return for making known his improvement to the public the inventor receives the benefit of a period of monopoly during which he becomes entitled to prevent others from performing his invention except by his licence. The necessarily technical process of applying for a patent, which involves the formulation of precisely expressed claims defining the extent of the monopoly applied for, and the equally technical process of investigating the claims made, inevitably involve a considerable lapse of time between the date when the inventor first makes his application and the date when his invention is exposed to the public and his patent is granted. Equally inevitably, because two or more persons are likely to evolve and develop similar concepts, competing applications for patents for the same invention will be made, sometimes within a short space of time and possibly in different parts of the world, so that provision has to be made for regulating priorities between co-pending applications both domestically and in different countries. This has for many years been dealt with by international convention which is reflected in domestic legislation, priority being regulated on a ‘first to file’ basis, so that that application which is the first in time to be filed for processing by the appropriate scrutinising authority is accorded precedence even though it may not, at that stage, have complied with all the formalities required by law for a completed application.