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[skittles]

Hi

Probably what I meant to write was can you take various features of existing products and use them in the design of a new product to be used for a completely different purpose to the parts you used to make it?

Complicated stuff - it's hard to describe so hope you understand!! THANKS

[JimIvey]

It basically comes down to 3 criteria.

1.  Is it novel?  In other words, is it something that is different, however slightly, from what's been done/known before.

2.  Is it sufficiently different from what's been done/know before to justify a patent?  Yes, that's a rather amorphous test, but that's it.  In the US, the test is "obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art."  In the PCT (which I assume is more closely related to EPO practice), it's whether the difference is "inventive" or represents an "inventive step".  In other words, if your invention is really an invention, you can get a patent.

Incidentally, if you find the legal standard lacking clarity and/or certainty, you'll start to understand why people like me specialize in this and make a profession out of it.

3.  Is it the kind of technology that is eligible for patent protection.  Here, we call that quality "useful", which is quite broad as you can see.  In the PCT (presumed to be closer to UK practice), it's called "industrial applicability."  The main concern for lack of industrial applicability these days is in the areas of computer software and "business methods" -- I have to use quotes because I still don't know exactly what that phrase means; no one has proffered a satisfactory definition as far as I know.

So, to get back to your question, everything that has industrial applicability, is novel, and is inventive is patentable.  That's true if it's a new method of use of an old thing, a combination of old things, minor (yet "inventive") modifications to an old thing, etc.

Regards.