2. Patent law's troubled object

Questioning the object of the right implies examining both its existence and the conditions that the law lays down for its protection. The patent must relate to an invention, which is not always readily apparent in the field of nanotechnology. The invention must also be new, capable of industrial application, and have been the subject of an inventive step - conditions that are particularly complex to assess here.

The first characteristic of patent law is that it is, among other things, a right relating to an immaterial thing. In other words, and rather counter-intuitively in legal systems inhabited by a materialistic vision of things, ownership here does not relate in any way to a perceptible product, but to the creation that brought it into being.

This is an important distinction, as it underpins the very raison d'être of intellectual property...