Unity of invention

An application must relate to only one invention or to a group of inventions related to one another in such a way as to form a single general inventive concept. The applicant may, as long as their application has not been approved, divide the original application of the general invention into two or more applications. The divisional applications must satisfy the requirements of the original application, including the original filing date and, where applicable, its priority right. After the formal examination and before the substantive examination of the invention, the Registration Authority must examine the unity of the invention; where it determines that the invention lacks unity, it shall notify the applicant in writing, with reasons, to limit the application to a single invention. The applicant may, within one month, state their reasons and explanations in objection to the Registration Authority's view. Where the Registration Authority does not accept the applicant's view, it shall examine one of the inventions set out in the application, based on the separate sets of claims referred to in Note 2 of this Article, as selected by the applicant. Where the applicant does not respond within the said period or does not state their selection, only the first invention shall be examined. The applicant may file the other invention(s) derived from the original application as new applications bearing the priority date of the original invention, provided that the new application states the same text of the original description. The new application may omit the names of inventors who had no role in that part of the invention.

Note 1 — Failure to state the connection of the components in a general invention does not render the relevant patent invalid.

Note 2 — To facilitate the Registration Authority's assessment of the unity of the invention, the applicant must group and separate their claims in an orderly and systematic manner. Where the application contains, at the same time, claims concerning both a process and a product, the process claims and the product claims must also be separated and grouped, in such a way that there is no dependence between these sets of claims. This rule also applies to claims concerning the process of producing that product and the process of using it. The manner of grouping the claims and their arrangement shall be specified in the Implementing Regulation of this Act.