| Patent law |
|---|
| Overviews |
| Procedural concepts |
| Patentability requirements and related concepts |
| Other legal requirements |
| By region / country |
| By specific subject matter |
| See also |
Patentable, statutory or patent-eligible subject matter is subject matter of an invention that is considered appropriate for patent protection in a given jurisdiction. The laws and practices of many countries stipulate that certain types of inventions should be denied patent protection. Together with criteria such as novelty, inventive step or nonobviousness, utility (or industrial applicability), which differ from country to country, the question of whether a particular subject matter is patentable is one of the substantive requirements for patentability.
The problem of patentable subject matter arises usually in cases of biological and software inventions, and much less frequently in other areas of technology.