It would appear that the preliminary application has failed, because of a lack of "novelty and innovation".
This is the international preliminary examination report which evaluates the strength of the patent with regards international prior art - the patent then gets kicked back to the national body for acceptance or otherwise of the patent, and whilst the IPER is influential, it is non-binding. http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/basic_facts/faqs_about_the_pct.pdf (see questions 18 and 19) In this case the IPER doesn't look too good for the pharmacy boys - though they seem to have preceeded onto the national phase (i.e. Australia only) and seem to have been awarded the patent.. I guess we'll know around the 14th March 2007 - if they keep paying their patent fees then the Guild obviously think it has _some_ value.. Keeping in mind I am not a lawyer (I don't even play one on tv) Andrew _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
