Prior to the present Patents Act, the 1906 Patents Act was in force. The present Act came into force in 2002 and so patents and pending patent applications in 1995 would have been treated according to the provisions of the 1906 Act. The earlier legislation failed to provide adequately for the protection of the product as opposed to the process. The patent had a maximum duration of fourteen years and more contemporary considerations such as the applicability of the Patent Cooperation Treaty were not taken account of. The prior Act failed to provide appropriately for the concept of novelty of invention and was overall very thin on procedural aspects. The various aspects and nuances of infringement were not comprehensively dealt with. All of these areas have since been remedied by the existing Patents Act.
