A patent is essentially a limited monopoly whereby the patent holder is granted the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the patented innovation for a limited period of time. The five primary requirements for patentability are: (1) patentable subject matter, (2) utility, (3) novelty, (4) nonobviousness, and (5) enablement. The Patent Law Treaty (PLT) aims at harmonizing national patent formalities throughout the world. It is designed to streamline and harmonize formal requirements set by national or regional Patent Offices with respect to the filing of national or regional patent applications and the maintenance of patents and certain additional requirements related to patents or patent applications, for example, communications, representation or recordation of changes concerning patents and patent applications. According to an impact assessment, the implementation of the PLT was considered to have positive impacts on users, particularly in terms of simplification of procedures.
Open Access articles are immediately, freely available on their Web site, a model mostly funded by charges paid by the author (usually through a research grant). The alternative for a researcher is self-archiving (i.e., to publish in a traditional journal, where only subscribers have immediate access, but to make the article available on their personal and/or institutional Web sites (including so-called repositories or archives)), which is a practice allowed by many scholarly journals.
Last date updated on April, 2024
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