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This Practice Note discusses the grounds for Patent invalidity and revocation under the Patents Act 1977 (PA 1977), focusing on lack of novelty (anticipation) and insufficiency. It also explains the key terminology which is relevant to patent validity considerations, such as the priority date, the person skilled in the art (or the skilled addressee) and common general knowledge (CGK).

The rationale behind patents, which protect new Inventions, is that they encourage innovation because they reward the patent owner with 20 or more years during which they can prevent others from infringing their patents, that is, making, using, importing or selling the invention without permission. For more information, see Practice Note: Patent infringement.

A patent is granted following a formal application and registration procedure. During this process (which is referred to as patent prosecution), the patent application is examined by a patent examiner at the relevant Intellectual property office (eg the UK Intellectual Property Office and European Patent Office (EPO)) to check whether the invention claimed is patentable (ie satisfies the patentability criteria) and that the patent application