Stamp

What is a registration patent or stamp patent?

The procedure to get to the grant of a patent varies per country (and/or per authority). There are grant procedures in which the patent is granted automatically after a number of formal requirements are met. This is, for example, the case in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Such a patent has thus not (yet) been searched for novelty and inventive step. If one would go to court with such a stamp patent to prohibit someone else from applying his invention, the court will first have to determine whether the invention meets the substantive requirements: Was the invention new?, Was it sufficiently inventive?, Is the invention industrially applicable? The alleged infringer will argue that the patent is not valid because the invention is not new and/or has no level of inventiveness.

Such a patent is sometimes referred to as “registration patent” or “stamp patent”, because it is obtained only by registering the invention. Belgium and the Netherlands have opted for such a system. Such unexamined patents are  viewed more critically by everyone as a large share is not valid. This non-validity can then later cause a problem in the exercise of the right in a court.