Patently Plausible

A patent specification need not show that the invention actually works, but must disclose enough to make the invention plausible, the House of Lords has ruled. In Conor Medsystems Inc v Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Incorporated the law lords considered the question of whether a claimed invention has an “inventive step”. The High Court and the Court of Appeal had found that the patent in this case lacked inventive step because the specification did not solve the problem underlying the claimed invention. However, the law lords ruled that courts should look to the patent claims and not the specification to identify the inventive step and determine obviousness.