Summary

It is social agreement between an inventor and the state upon which the system of patent protection of inventions is, in essence, built. The state grants to the authors of new and useful technical solutions for a certain time period a monopoly right over the invention and obliges all third parties to refrain from using said invention without the permission of the author (or owner). In exchange, the author makes public an invention that enjoys legal protection. Meanwhile, there is a category of inventions that might be classified as inventions of national defence relevance. These include solutions that the competent authorities believe should be fully or partly classified and whose use in commerce or making public by other means must be precluded; the latter are termed classified inventions. Classified inventions are legally regulated in Estonian law, with the set of provisions being relatively new, having emerged on 1 March 2009 when the much-needed amendments to the State Secrets and Classified Information of Foreign States Act and the Patents Act entered into force. The article gives an overview of this regulation, focussing on issues of who classifies an invention and at which level; how patent applications for such inventions are formalised, submitted to the Patent Office, and processed there; and how compensation is awarded for the restriction of the use of an invention due to its being classified.