In patent law, industrial applicability or industrial application is a patentability requirement according to which a patent can only be granted for an invention which is susceptible of industrial application, i.e. for an invention which can be made or used in some kind of industry. In this context, the concept of "industry" is far-reaching: it includes agriculture, for instance. An example of invention which would not be susceptible of industrial application is "a method of contraception to be applied in the private and personal sphere of a human being".
In relationship with United States patent law, the utility requirement is a more or less corresponding, but different, requirement.
Famous quotes containing the word industrial:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)