Jordan: The New Jordanian Patent Law

As part of the process of acceding to the WTO, Jordan has enacted its new Patent Law No. 32 of 1999, in compliance with the international standards which Jordan has been committed to through joining the TRIPs Agreement. This law also came to remedy the previous law, which suffered ambiguity in several respects.

In general, the rules of the new Patent Law enjoy clarity and simplicity, and are well divided under various main subjects of the Law. The main subjects are gradually headlined in the law as follows: Registration of the patent, Rights of the patentee, Licensing of inventions, Expiry and nullification of patents, Industrial property registration agents, Crimes and penalties, the Precautionary measures, and Closing rules.

In substance, the new Patent Law contains new established rules and modified rules. The major amendments can be summarized as follows:

• The Law establishes the rule of priority claim when filing a patent application (Article 10).

• The Law identifies the duration of temporary protection for the patent applicant to be the period between the acceptance date of the application and the granting date of the patent, giving the applicant the right to exploit the invention and legally act against any infringement on the invention (Article 13.b.1).

• The Law grants the patentee the right to act against any infringement on the patent and to claim compensation if the infringement is repeated (Article 13.b.2).

• The Law extends the duration for any person to oppose a patent at the Registrar's office to three months from the date of publication in the Official Gazette (Article 14).

• The Law modifies the duration of the patent protection to be twenty years from the date of filing the application for registration (Article 17).

• Regarding criminal protection, the Law unifies the penalties of patent crimes to imprisonment for a period not less than three months and not more than one year and/or a fine not less than one hundred Jordanian Dinars and not more than three thousand Jordanian Dinars (Article 32.a).

• The Law awards the patentee the right to claim damages on all types of crimes underlined by the law which may occur to the patent (Article 32.c).

• The Law grants the patentee, even prior to filing criminal and/or civil case, the right to request the court to issue an order to take any of the specified following precautionary measures :

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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