Patent Act 1970.

Article 1 of the above-mentioned Act establishes that on request, patents shall be granted for inventions in all fields of technology, provided that they are new, not obvious to the person skilled in the art from the state of the art, and susceptible of industrial application. Inventions that fulfill the afore-mentioned conditions shall be patented, even if they concern a product consisting of or containing biological material or a method by means of which biological material is produced, processed or used, wherein biological material means any material containing genetic information and capable of reproducing itself or being reproduced in a biological system. These patentable inventions shall also include: 1) biological material which is isolated from its natural environment or produced by means of a technical method even if it previously occurred in nature; 2) an element isolated from the human body or otherwise produced by means of a technical process, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, even if the structure of that element is identical to that of a natural element.The text consists of 183 articles divided into 6 Parts as follows: General provisions (I); Patent authorities and patent institutions (II); Procedure (III); Infringement of patents and obligation to provide information (IV); Bio-Patent Monitoring Committee (V); Transitional and final provisions (VI).

Implements: Constitution of Austria. (1920-10-01)