Patent registrations may be granted to any invention that fills the following requirements. It must be new in all ways – this is known as absolute novelty, it must be useful on a practical level, and it must be inventive – that is to say that it must not be so similar to a previously available article that it required little ingenuity to make the invention. The first step in patent registrations is to make sure that the invention really is new and does not infringe on a similar invention.

This is called a novelty search, and may be carried out at CIPRO’s Disclosure Centre by either the applicant himself or a patent attorney on his behalf. It is always advisable to carry out this search in other countries as well, to ensure that the invention really is new.