Many Registered Inventions in Iran Do Not Qualify as Patents

TEHRAN (Iran News) Mohammad-Hadi Mirshamsi, professor of private law at Allameh Tabataba’i University, told ILNA that while Iran has an active record of registering inventions, “many of the so-called patents filed by Iranian startups and knowledge-based companies could not be patented in other countries, because they lack the essential condition of being new.” He noted that some of these inventions may already have been registered abroad years earlier.

Mirshamsi explained that under global intellectual property law, an invention must be new, involve an inventive step, and have industrial applicability. “It is not enough for an idea to be unregistered. Even if an invention was disclosed or used publicly without registration, it cannot later be patented elsewhere,” he said.

He emphasized that the novelty requirement is universal: “For an invention to be granted patent rights, it must not have existed anywhere in the world before. If the idea has already been made public in any form, it no longer qualifies.”

The comments came in the context of Iran’s recent accession to the Strasbourg Agreement, an international treaty on the classification of patents. The agreement, formally known as the International Patent Classification (IPC), was adopted in 1971 and is overseen by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Iran officially joined in March 2025, becoming one of 66 member states.

According to Mirshamsi, the agreement helps patent examiners by dividing technology into eight major categories with about 80,000 subcategories. This allows faster and more precise evaluation of whether an invention is genuinely new. He noted that although Iran has now formally joined the agreement, its patent office had already been informally using the classification system.

Mirshamsi described the practical steps of patent registration in Iran: applicants submit forms to the national patent office, where experts evaluate claims against existing knowledge and prior inventions—known as “prior art.” If this process is not carried out rigorously, he warned, patents may later be invalidated.

“Comparing an invention against prior art is a heavy and precise scientific task,” he said. “If an examiner fails to properly assess novelty, the registration can be annulled.”

While Iran is a member of the Paris Convention and WIPO, and has joined the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) allowing international filings, Mirshamsi said Iranian inventors face practical barriers in registering abroad. Chief among them are banking sanctions, which make it difficult to pay filing and attorney fees overseas. However, he stressed that the sanctions themselves do not prevent foreign patent offices from accepting Iranian applications.

Statistically, he said, the number of patents registered inside Iran is “acceptable for a developing country,” but foreign inventors rarely register their patents in Iran due to investment restrictions and lack of incentives. This contrasts with China and the United States, which lead the world in patent filings.

Mirshamsi acknowledged that many Iranian inventions fall short of global standards because they often involve only minor modifications of existing technologies. “Some startups may replicate a foreign invention with slight, non-patentable changes and present it as new,” he said.

This, he argued, undermines the credibility of Iran’s patent statistics compared to countries with stricter and more specialized evaluation systems.

The professor linked these shortcomings to Iran’s limited integration in global trade. “The purpose of patents is to give inventors exclusive rights so they can attract investment and bring products to market, ideally beyond national borders,” he said. “When a country’s share in international trade is small, and its high-quality products cannot easily reach global markets, the motivation for stronger, more innovative patents diminishes.”