Methodology - Patents and licences

Patent statistics

Patent statistics brings information about results and successfulness of research, development, and innovation activity in selected areas of technology. Data were processed by the CZSO based on data sources of the Industrial Property Office of the CR (IPO CR). Patent data are broken down according to the Patent Statistics Manual of the OECD (OECD, Paris 2009). Granted patents can be classified to selected technological areas based on the International Patent Classification.

Patent

A patent is a public deed issued by the relevant patent office, which provides legal protection to an invention for the period of up to 20 years (provided that maintenance fees are paid), namely in the territory for which it was issued by the office. Patent protection in the territory of the Czech Republic is ensured by the IPO CR.

Patents are granted for inventions, which are novelties, they are a result of activity of inventors, and are industrially applicable. The following can be patented: not only products and technologies, but also chemically produced substances, drugs, industrial production microorganisms, as well as microbiological ways and products obtained by those ways. What cannot be patented, on the contrary, are discoveries or scientific theories, programmes for computers, new cultivars of plants and breeds of animals or ways of surgical or therapeutic treatment of human or animal bodies, and diagnostic methods used at human or animal bodies.

Utility model

The technical solution of the utility model, which is protected after the registration certificate is issued, does not have to reach the creative level of a patentable invention. However, it is required that it goes beyond mere professional skill, is not a mere external modification of the product, and is industrially usable. Eligibility for protection is not examined for a utility model - i.e. a utility model is always registered if it meets the registration conditions set by law. Manufacturing processes cannot be protected by a utility model. About 40 states provide protection for utility models.

Licences

The Czech Statistical Office has been surveying data on licences valid in the territory of the Czech Republic in the area of industrial property protection since the year 2005 by the Annual questionnaire on licences. It is an exhaustive survey. In terms of dissemination of results of research and development and their capitalisation, the most important subjects of licence agreements are provided patent licences, on which the CZSO primarily focuses in its survey. Since 2008, all legal persons with a valid patent for the territory of the Czech Republic as at 31 December of the reference year have been reporting units in the survey on provided patent licences.

A licence is one of the possibilities to use industrial rights and intellectual property on a commercial basis. A licence agreement refers to granting of the right, in an agreed scope and in an agreed territory, for acquisition or provision of patented or non-patented inventions. The licensor entitles the licence acquirer to exercise industrial property rights in an agreed scope and in an agreed territory and the licence acquirer undertakes to provide some payments (licence fees) or another asset.

By subject of a licence there are patent licences, the subject of which is to provide the right to use a valid patent either in the country of the acquirer (purchaser) or in countries, to which the acquirer of the licence intends to export the licence product, utility model licences, the subject of which is an industrial design or a utility model, know-how licences, the subject of which is to provide unprotected production and technical knowledge or experience.