Patent
The Patent domain tests substantive patentability under Part II of RA 8293 (the IP Code) and the prosecution steps that carry an application from filing to grant at the Bureau of Patents. Expect questions on exclusions, prior art, claim requirements, deadlines and the life of a patent.
Patentable subject matter
Sec. 21 requires a technical solution of a problem in any field of human activity that is new, involves an inventive step, and is industrially applicable. Sec. 22 removes, among others: discoveries and scientific theories; mathematical methods; schemes, rules and methods of doing business, playing games or performing mental acts; programs for computers; methods of treating the human or animal body, though the products used are patentable; plant varieties and animal breeds; essentially biological processes, with microbiological processes patentable; and aesthetic creations.
Novelty and inventive step
Prior art is everything made available to the public before the filing or priority date, anywhere in the world, plus the contents of earlier Philippine applications. Inventive step asks whether the invention would have been obvious to a person skilled in the art, applying the problem-and-solution approach against the closest prior art.
Prosecution and term
The filing needs a request, description, claims, drawings where necessary and an abstract. Publication follows 18 months from the filing or priority date, and substantive examination must be requested within six months of publication; otherwise the application is deemed withdrawn. The term is 20 years from the filing date, maintained by fees beginning on the fifth anniversary.
Worked example
A claim to a method of calculating insurance premiums using a spreadsheet is refused: it is a scheme for doing business and a program for a computer. Rewritten as a networked system producing a specific technical effect, such as reduced processing latency, it may survive because it recites technical means.
Traps
Confusing industrial applicability with commercial utility; forgetting that a treatment method is excluded while a new drug is not; missing the six-month examination request; counting 20 years from grant rather than filing.