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1. There shall be established in the Democratic Republic of Madagascar industrial
property arrangements for protection by means of patents and inventors’ certificates, marks,
industrial designs, trade names and for the repression of unfair competition.
2. Industrial property in Madagascar shall be administered by an industrial property
agency referred to hereinafter as “the Agency.”
Title I
Provisions on Patents and Inventors’ Certificates
Section 1
General Provisions
3. At the request of the applicant and at his discretion, the Agency shall issue patents or
inventors’ certificates for patentable inventions.
4.—(1) In all types of industry, any new invention resulting from an inventive activity
and that is capable of at least one industrial application shall be patentable.
(2) Notwithstanding any protection subsisting in a patented invention, an improvement
thereto satisfying the requirements of paragraph (1) shall also be patentable independently or
in the form of a certificate of addition.
5.—(1) An invention shall be new if it does not form part of the state of the art,
whereby the state of the art shall comprise everything made available to the public, at any
place or at any time, by means of a written or oral description, by use or in any other way,
before the date of filing of the patent application or the date of any priority validly claimed for
the invention.
(2) Novelty shall not be destroyed by disclosure of the invention at an officially
recognized exhibition either on the national territory or in the member countries of the Paris
Convention, within the six months preceding filing of a patent application or a validly
claimed priority date for the invention, subject to production of a recognized certificate
attesting to participation of the inventor or his successors in title at such exhibition during
which the public could obtain knowledge of the object incorporating the patentable invention.
(3) Novelty shall not be destroyed if disclosure results from obvious abuse in relation to
the applicant or his legal predecessor.
6. To involve an inventive step, an invention may not derive obviously from either the
state of the art or the normal skill of a man of the art, whether in its means, its application, the
combination of means or the product that is the object thereof, or in the industrial result
obtained thereby.
7. An invention shall be considered as susceptible of industrial application if it is
capable of manufacture or use in any type of industry.
8.—(1) Subject to the specific regulations in respect of the subject matters listed below,
applications for patents or inventors’ certificates shall not be admissible or shall be rejected
where they concern:
(i) inventions contrary to public policy or morality;
(ii) plant or animal varieties or essentially biological processes for the production of
plants or animals;