Industrial Property Law

Once the patent application has been filed and the filing date obtained, the INPI proceeds with the review of the application, which consists of examining it in the light of the grounds for rejection listed exhaustively in Article L. 612-12 of the Intellectual Property Code.

Law No 68-1 of 2 January 1968, amended and supplemented by Law No 78-742 of 13 July 1978, sought to enhance the value of the French patent by increasing the INPI's powers of control, enabling it to penalize non-compliance with most of the conditions for granting a patent. Reinforced by the Pacte Law of 22 May 2019 , this control now extends beyond manifest error of assessment, enabling the INPI to verify the patentability requirements without making the rejection of the application conditional on a “manifest” defect, bringing French law into line with European provisions on patent grant requirements by the European Patent Office . This version of the text came into force on 22 May 2020.

Law No 2019-486 of 22 May 2019 on the growth and transformation of undertakings, known as the PACTE Law, OJ of 23 May 2019.

Provisions set out in the Munich Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, now known as “EPC 2000”, since the Act revising the European Patent Convention of 29 November 2000, which entered into force on 13 December 2007, OJ EPO 2001, special edition no. 4.

279. Processing the application