Právní ochrana vynálezů při podnikatelské činnosti v rámci Evropské unie

Annotation Innovations have been accompanying the human society during the whole era of its development. The concerns in stimulation of the innovations have lead to efforts for legal protection. Time limitation of patent owner's rights to an exclusive use of a technical solution has been raising opinion disputes during the whole period of its evolution. Even nowadays, in Czech as well as in European context, there are still many questions open in range of the patent protection and to contribute to its better understanding and clarification has been the main goal of this publication. From the point of view of the Czech milieu we have been living in a period of a growing attention paid to innovations while at the same time it has been a period filled with many substantial changes in range of the protection of technical solutions. The Czech Republic's access to the European Patent Convention has within the scope of this international agreement enabled validity of the European patents granted by the decision of the European Patent Office in the Czech territory for the first time. In addition, our country had became a member of the European Communities what has resulted in important changes in legislation regarding the industrial property rights protection and partially regarding the solutions protected by patents as well. These facts have had a considerable impact on the business environment in the Czech Republic, giving the Czech Republic the role of an active player on the European patent playground. This writing deals in particular with the matters of legal protection of inventions and their economic impact, while in some parts of this work, somewhat unsystematically; it swings into contemplations about the industrial property itself. This happens willfully and with an intention to analyze some of the issues in broader context and therewith contribute to better understanding of the complicated and in some cases distinctively contradictory or controversially manifesting relationships. First part of this book characterizes elementary issues of the patent law, thus not only historically but as regards the contemporary European and Czech legal milieu as well. European patent system is represented by the activities of the European Patent Organization and national patent offices. The Community patent system, despite the effort put in during the past 50 years, is still does not exist. However, this does not mean that current system does not provide us with numerous issues enough to contemplate about and analyze. The decisions of the European Patent Office are influenced by the diversity of the historic evolution of the patent systems in various parts of Europe; therefore they can be used as an interesting inspiration and study material for the expert public. That is the reason why there is often referred to them in this work. On the other hand, the legal relations originated from the European patents, after the European patent protection had been granted, are a subject to a review according to the national legislation, therefore it is not surprising that the decisions and results of similar disputes not seldom bring different results. It is therefore worth to analyze them thoroughly. The extent of this work has only allowed me to concentrate only on some of the above mentioned issues, such are the possibility of legal protection of computer2 implemented inventions, issues connected with the extent of the patent protection and basic ideas on financial assessment of technical solutions, primarily of the patents. Some more detailed considerations were included too, such as about the debates and their progress in European level. Herewith I mean the matters concerning the translations of European and possibly Community patents, patent protection quality and in long term, thought until now unsuccessful debates regarding the creation of the European patent judiciary.