Patent

Requirement

These four requirements are written in the Rijksoctrooiwet and are:

• invention
• novelty
• inventor activity
• industrially applicable

Procedure

• The Dutch patenting procedure is a simplified version of the European procedure.
• The Dutch procedure from article 24 to 39 as described in the Rijksoctrooiwet and the procedure from the European Patent treaty.
• The European patent procedure starts in Rijswijk or München. Although, a European patent will only be granted after the European Patent Office (EOB) has investigated whether the application fulfills the form requirements and material requirements.

Cost

Pattent on a Design Calculator:

• Nederlands
• EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office)
• WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).

Others:

• The costs for the patent representative for a European application can vary from € 25,000,- to € 50,000,- euro.
• The more countries you choose to register your patent, the higher the maintenance costs will be.
• In addition, you also have to pay for the translation by the EOB.
• The costs for applying for an international patent are usually correlated to the amount of countries where you want your patent to be valid. Through the PCT procedure you can make a patent valid in many countries for around € 4,000,- to € 5,000,- per patent. From the third year the costs will significantly rise.

Validation

The length of a Dutch patent is 20 years. The validity period of a patent is dependent on the maintenance costs that you pay. If you pay the maintenance fees for a shorter period, the validity is also shorter. If you stop paying the maintenance fees, the validity of your patent also stops.

API / Design

by virtue of the European Patent Convention (EPC), a computer program claimed “as such” is not a patentable invention (Article 52 (2) © and (3) EPC.

The legislation also protects computer programs – or APIs in all cases, and in themselves, as intellectual property (copyright); and in some cases, when they form part of an invention, as industrial property (patents).

The Intellectual Property Act defines a computer program (software) and regulates the copyright that protects it according to the following regulation.

What can be copyrighted

Subject matter of copyright: 17 U.S. Code § 102.Subject matter of copyright: In general

• Architecture
• but not procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery… api names can't be copywrighted. Why You Can’t Copyright an API - an API is not “software” generally; it’s a particular set of rules and structures contained within some software.

Documentation / Reference

• https://www.intellectueeleigendom.nl/en/patent-registration/
• Patent Center of the Netherlands