Notion of Diagnostic Methods in Patent Law in the Light of Right to Health

Although diagnostics methods in Article 4 of the patents, industrial designs and trademark act are excluded from patent protection, but about the nature and limits of the exception in our legal system has not raised much debate. The nature of the exception requires an understanding of the reasons of exception and regardless of these reasons we cannot reach a proper understanding of the nature and limits of diagnostic methods. Many reasons for excluding diagnostic methods from the scope of patentable invention are mentioned and the right to health are one of the most important of these reasons. In this paper, we firstly examine the human rights challenges of diagnostic methods patentability, and then interpret the nature of diagnostic methods in the light of the right to health. On this base we will examine the European Patent Office interpretations for these methods. By taking advantage of this base, we examine subjects, such as the role of medical intervention and practicing the methods on the human body in the coverage of this exclusion from patent protection.