Finland’s New Patents Act: The Government Bill and Key Changes

The Finnish Government has submitted to Parliament a Government Bill (HE 204/2025 vp) for the enactment of a new Patents Act. The Government Bill is intended to replace the current Patents Act (550/1967) in its entirety and to modernise the national patent law framework by clarifying its provisions and better aligning it with European patent regulations. To do this, the Government Bill introduces a range of technical and substantive amendments, including:

When compared with the initial draft Government Bill (see our previous article, Reform of the Finnish Patents Act), the Government Bill as submitted remains largely intact.

The new Patents Act is intended to enter into force on 1 January 2027. However, due to the implementation measures required, the Act can enter into force no earlier than six months after it has been adopted and confirmed. The Finnish Patent and Registration Office estimates that it must update forms, guidelines, and websites, a process requiring at least six months before the Act can take effect.

The Government Bill introduces an explicit statutory provision on partial invalidation (Section 113(2)) and at the same time abolishes the current limitation procedure under Section 52(2) of the Patents Act. The new provision addresses a longstanding uncertainty in the current legislation under which both limitation and partial invalidation have in practice been applied in parallel.

Under the proposed provision, a patent proprietor may seek partial invalidation before the Market Court during invalidity proceedings. This means that if the grounds for patent invalidation concern only part of the patent, the Court may, at the proprietor's request, limit the scope of the patent by amending the claims in accordance with the proprietor's proposal. The patent claims can be amended, e.g. by removing certain claims or reformulating claims based on the description. The purpose of the provision is to give the proprietor the opportunity to defend against an invalidity action by modifying the patent claims during the proceedings concerning it. Any amended claims are required to be narrower than the original patent and correspond to the grounds for invalidity invoked by the claimant, and the patent as amended must continue to satisfy the requirements for validity.

Whilst the practical effects of the amendment are likely to remain minor for individual parties, given that the partial invalidation has already been applied under general civil procedure, the clarification it brings to the legal framework is expected to accelerate procedural efficiency. Moreover, the provision confirms that the Market Court may not partially invalidate a patent on its own initiative, but only upon the request of the patent proprietor, thereby resolving a previously unsettled issue.

To streamline court proceedings, the draft Government Bill introduced a new procedural provision to restrict the submission of new patent claim sets during appeal proceedings. Under established case law, patent proprietors are currently allowed to submit new patent claim sets during appeal proceedings, hence transforming the appeal process into an extension of the patent granting procedure.

While the underlying policy objective received positive feedback during consultation, the formulation of the provision was criticised for deviating from the general administrative procedural law. The provision would have required appeals to be directed at specific facts, requests, arguments and evidence underlying the appealed decision.

Under the Government Bill, Section 121 allows the submission of new patent claim sets only for a valid reason. An example of a valid reason provided in the Government Bill is where the appeal concerns a decision by the Finnish Patent and Registration Office in an opposition matter and the opponent presents new grounds for opposition to the court.

The reform introduces an express provision clarifying that an inventor must be a natural person. This codifies existing practice and provides clarity in the context of increasing use of artificial intelligence and automated systems in research and development processes.

During the drafting process of the Government Bill, a provision was considered that would have allowed inventors to waive their right to be named as an inventor in certain circumstances. However, following the consultation feedback, this provision was ultimately removed from the Government Bill. The removal was based on a concern that the provision would have been impractical to apply in practice given the Patent and Registration Office’s limited capacity to verify whether the criteria were met in individual cases.

Unlike the Trademark Act, the current Patents Act does not enable the court to impose a conditional fine in support of a patent infringement injunction. The reform introduces a new provision enabling courts to impose patent infringement injunctions subject to a fine, as governed by the Act on Conditional Fines (1113/1990). The action to have the fine imposed can be brought by the claimant claiming the injunction.

For further information on how these changes might affect your business, please reach out to us.