As many will be aware, Australia has a 2-tier patent
system, providing for the more common Standard Patents (which
provide protection for up to 20 years for inventions that are novel
and inventive), and Innovation Patents (providing protection for up
to 8 years for inventions that are novel and
"innovative").
The most significant difference between the two patent types is
that the threshold for an invention being "innovative" is
much lower than that for an invention being "inventive"
and in practice, Innovation Patents can provide protection for
inventions that are essentially only novel over the prior art, even
if they may be obvious.
As well as being used to protect more incremental inventions
(which may nevertheless be very commercially valuable), Innovation
Patents have been used as a tool in patent enforcement because,
since they cannot be invalidated for lack of inventiveness, they
are very robust patents and can be difficult to invalidate. Indeed,
they have
