Patent Rights
Intellectual Property and more specifically patents are becoming increasingly important in our current society. Obtaining and exploiting patents for technological inventions should be possible for everyone, including small and middle-sized companies. Related procedures should as much as possible be harmonized on a worldwide economical basis. Therefore it is the intention in this report to make people aware of the importance of patents and to issue some advices in order to optimise the procedures and costs for obtaining and enforcing patent rights in Belgium and to bring them in line with general european and international guidelines. More specifically some current problems with respect to patentability in the fields of biotechnology, software and business methods are considered and some hot topics and problems related to the enforcement of patents are brought up. In addition, attention is paid to exploitation and use of patent rights by means of agreements and transactions.