Recent surveys show how more than 60 per cent of women in the Pacific islands have experienced gender-based and partner violence. Service providers have made sure that women, after the fact, are taken care of. However, there has not been much focus and work towards prevention.
In order to take preventive measures, Australia has signed an agreement worth almost $20 million with the European Union and the United Nations to help tackle the root causes of gender inequality and violence against women and girls in the Pacific.
The notion of giving talented inventors a limited monopoly for their instructing the rest of their less talented fellow citizens is not new. It is generally accepted that the first systematic patent law was developed in Venice, a hotbed of Renaissance industrial activity. The 1474 Venetian patent statute sums up the economic rationale of patent law pretty nicely
. “we have among us men of great genius, apt to invent and discover ingenious devices, and in view of the grandeur and virtue of our city, more such men come to us every day from diverse parts. Now, if provision were made for the works and devices discovered by such persons, so that others who may see them could not build them and take the inventor’s honour away, more men would then apply their genius, would discover, and build devices of great utility and benefit to our commonwealth.’
Mexico has recently approved a reform which seeks to provide more efficient, advanced, and tailored responses to domestic violence cases.
Mexican Congresswoman Josefina Salazar Báez has presented a reform initiative to the Law of Access of Women to a Life Free of Violence (in Spanish: Ley de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia). With this reform, Josefina is seeking to expand the type of emergency orders; and, extend the power of the judges to revoke, or modify orders of protection.
Josefina adds that the priority of this reform is to,
"Ensure the victim's safety immediately so she can live a life free of violence."
Before I analyse the scope of European patent protection, the three legal constructs of a patent must be explained in general. Firstly, an ‘invention’ is a mental construct inside the mind of the inventor, with no physical substance. While an ‘embodiment’ of the invention is a physical form of the invention (a tangible or visible form of an idea). The ‘claim’ protects at least one embodiment, but the best patent claims protect the whole invention.( ie, the inventor’s embodiment and all other possible embodiment of the invention.) [1]
When an inventor is ready to file a patent application, the patent agent must decide what has been invented; and if the inventor know what he/she wants to protect. The relevant questions important for patent law and application process are: the kind of claim, the inventions commercial importance and the existence of prior art relating to the claim[2]. However, the claim represents ‘the heart of any patent application’[3] for it defines the scope of protection given to an invention. The claim of a patent application is the first and sometimes the only parts of the patent application actually reviewed by the patent examiner[4].